Essays on supplier responsiveness and buyer firm value - Nyenrode ...

uyer firm performance through a series of mediators. However, not all mediators have a
significant influence on buyer firm value. Particularly, in the context of the U.S. and The
Netherlands. We find that buyer satisfaction does not matter in the U.S., but it does
matter in The Netherlands. We argue that this is a result of the different national cultures,
specifically a Dutch feminine culture focuses more on soft factors, such as informal
interaction between the buyer and supplier. However, the U.S. is a more masculine
society where hard factors matter more such as factors related to the bottom line such as
IdRR. Given, this importance of hard or objective factors in the United States, led us to
question whether perceptual metrics would reinforce objective factors because marketers
use many heuristic measures in decision making. Moreover, we were motivated in part
on recent research findings that the marketing department’s influence in the firm
increases when they are more accountable for the money that they have spent (Verhoef &
Leeflang, 2009). Hence, for the supplier’s firm to learn about their buyer’s needs, and
later formulate a response to those buyer’s needs the supplier’s marketing department
requires a sizeable marketing budget. And in order to be allocated adequate budgets the
supplier’s marketing department needs to be able to communicate the value created by
them to their own financial department and their buyer’s financial departments.
Therefore, we investigated whether perceptual metrics based on managerial perceptions
would be confirmed by metrics preferred by financial managers namely, objective
accounting metrics. However, we find that they are not. The primary reason we suggest is
that perceptual metrics are not perfectly substitutable by objective accounting metrics.
Hence, we recommend that firms to develop substitutable perceptual metrics.
In summation, we have found that strategic supplier responsiveness does
influence buyer firm value, although this effect does not always flow through the same
channel. On the one hand, in the case of the United States a supplier’s responsiveness
must reduce IdRR and then consequently creates value for the supplier’s brand through
brand preference exhibited by the buyer, whereas for the buyer it creates value through
stable and accelerated cash flows. On the other hand, in countries with a feminine culture
like The Netherlands we find an additional way of increasing buyer firm and that is
through increasing buyer satisfaction. Hence, an implication for managers is that they
should rely on satisfaction only if satisfaction is a reliable indicator in the national
cultural context. In addition, IdRR is a preferable metric as it is applicable in more
contexts than buyer satisfaction. This is because IdRR measures idiosyncratic risk, and
risk has its origins in the field of finance which makes it a more easy to relate to financial
concepts, and therefore, is more acceptable to managers. Moreover, we recommend that
managers develop perceptual measures for marketing and firm performance that are
substitutable with financial measures because based on our data we found that currently
managers use performance measures that are not substitutable. Hence, though marketing
may generate value for buyers through strategic supplier responsiveness, it does not show
up on balance sheet measures, and hence, the marketing effort is difficult to justify to the
customers.
In conclusion, strategic supplier responsiveness is an important mechanism of
creating supplier and buyer firm value.
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