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

always remain potential threats and competitors. The logic of Porter’s (1985) five forces
framework still applies in the strategic context because the five forces still compete for the same
profit pie. For example, Samsung a strategic supplier of component processors to Apple moved
into Apple’s market of mobile devices. Despite the mixed relationship between some strategic
suppliers and their buyers, other buyers use ingenuous ways to leverage their suppliers’ marketbased
strengths. For instance, Dell, Toshiba, Acer, and HP are some firms that employ the
ingredient branding strategy, and by doing so, they leverage their chip supplier’s strength to
increase their own products’ attractiveness. Hence, a powerful supplier is not always viewed as a
threat, and the relationship between a strategic supplier and buyer can be mutually beneficial.
However, the underpinning of success in the marketplace is an understanding of the
customer’s needs (market orientation) (Cane, 2010). The detractors of the market orientation
philosophy have claimed that it leads to a narrow focus and ignores potential future customer
needs. In addition, Collins (2009) argues that one of the reasons that many previously identified
“good to great” companies have failed is expansion to too many customer industries rather than
focusing on the customer’s needs. Given the muddled nature of the strategic supplier-buyer
relationship, what is unclear is whether focusing on the customer’s needs pays off for the
supplier and the buyer. Therefore, this dissertation focuses on the following research global
question:
“What is the impact of supplier market orientation through idiosyncratic relational risk,
buyer satisfaction, and supplier brand value on buyer firm value?”
To further answer this global research question we have three sub-questions. They are as
follows:
To answer our global research question, we followed a stepwise process, organizing our
research question into three sets of problems. Chapter 2 addresses the following question:
“Does it make relational and financial sense to be a responsive strategic supplier?”
Chapter 3 addresses whether, in this age of globalization, whether the model proposed in
Chapter 2 would hold true in The Netherlands because, as stated earlier, many firms have
attempted to adopt truly close buyer and supplier relationships, and these differences are nationspecific.
Given the importance of The Netherlands and the United States as two major trading
partners, we therefore, investigate whether the model developed in Chapter 2 would hold in The
Netherlands. Therefore, our second research question is:
“Does our model of strategic supplier responsiveness hold across national/cultural
borders?”
The final issue is how we measure performance. Chapter 4 deals with the methodological
issue of whether perceptual or objective performance measures should be used. In the past, many
studies on market orientation have used perceptual performance measures. However, they have
often not correlated well with subjective performance measures. We investigate whether there is
empirical evidence for the correlation between subjective and objective measures, in the context
of purchasing managers when dealing with strategic suppliers, based on the model developed in
Chapter 2. Therefore, our third research question is:
“What are the differences between firm-level perceptual measures of performance and
accounting measures of performance?”
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