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They might also include the ease with which a marketing department could justify marketing expenditures on a strategic supplier because of their strong marketplace reputation, prior performance in areas such as customer profit improvement, or help them to avoid risk through the supplier’s superior knowledge networks (Hague & Jackson, 1994). Hence, being associated with a good supplier brand has both tangible and intangible benefits for the buyer. Furthermore, in B2B markets, buyers are likely to choose well-known brands if either one of the following conditions exists: (a) when product failure has serious repercussions for the enterprise, (b) the product requires substantial service support, or (c) the product is complex (Hutton, 1997). The first of the three conditions always exists in the case of strategic suppliers. Furthermore, in B2B markets, psychological factors such as the supplier’s brand reputation may matter more than the physical product attributes (Shaw, Giglierano, & Kallis, 1991). Hence, well-known brands would be a logical choice for B2B purchase managers. From the above evidence, we can conclude that a supplier’s brand strength through the mechanism of functional and symbolic brand associations positively influences the buyer’s firm value. Therefore: H5: The higher the strategic supplier’s brand value (perceptions) the greater will be the buyer’s firm value. 2.4 Methodology 2.4.1 Questionnaire Design and Scale Development Churchill (1979) suggests that items for a survey should be generated by using literature surveys, experience surveys, critical incidents, focus groups, and insight-stimulating examples. We used a literature survey and an experience survey because literature was readily available via the EBSCO database and key academics who have taught purchasing managers and were easily accessible. Furthermore, we needed unique insights that would give us a perspective on the idiosyncratic working of organizations. Such insights provide researchers with a deeper understanding of the phenomenon they are investigating. Therefore, focus groups were ruled out because they generate breadth but not depth of insights (Barabba & Zaltman, 1991), and insight-stimulating examples were used, albeit indirectly, when interviewees narrated some examples. For the literature review, we analyzed the relevant papers on market orientation, market-based assets theory, and satisfaction literature. Supplier Responsiveness or Market Orientation. The first step of developing measures for market orientation is domain specification. This has been addressed in the definitions on page 22, where responsiveness is identified as the most important component of market orientation. The main criterion for proposing a new definition in marketing is if existing definitions do not suffice for an investigation (Churchill, 1979). Following that dictum, we do not add any unnecessary new definitions. In this chapter, we do, however, adapt the market orientation scale (MARKOR) constructed by Kohli, Jaworski, and Kumar (1993). In the remainder of this section, we first discuss whether market orientation should be measured by one general factor or three sub-component factors. Second, we discuss the reasons why we left out some questions of the MARKOR scale and the motives of why we adapted the remaining items of the scale. As our conceptualization of market orientation is based upon the Kohli and Jaworski (1990) paper, we selected the MARKOR scale that Kohli et al. (1993) developed to measure the concept of market orientation. Kohli and Jaworski (1990) conceptualized market orientation as a process that included three distinct components. These component factors of market orientation lack discriminant validity when measured by MARKOR, and that means that the constructs are not truly distinct from one another (Kohli et al., 1993). Furthermore, the lack of discriminant validity increases when 40
espondents from functions besides marketing are asked. As the components of the MARKOR scales lack discriminant validity, it is an issue of concern as market orientation involves responding to the customer’s needs by generating, disseminating, and responding to information throughout the organization, and not specifically only within the marketing department. Hence, when offering their assessments of market orientation regardless of their functional duties, respondents should be able to distinguish between the components of market orientation. If they cannot distinguish between the components of market orientation, a single general market orientation factor should be used. The results presented by Kohli et al. (1993) improved when the items of the MARKOR scales and latent constructs were reduced. The best results they presented were with one general latent factor of market orientation and two latent component factors of market orientation. However, even the best results presented by Kohli et al. (1993) were not within the acceptable goodness of fit statistics range. Therefore, further item reduction would be necessary to improve the goodness of fit statistics when we use their scale. The first issue that we had to address was whether to adopt a component-wise approach or a general factor approach of market orientation. We informally interviewed fellow academics and MBA students with work experience about what they viewed as the most important component of market orientation from the customer’s perspective, and it was agreed that the response component was the most important. In addition, some of the academics and students were of the opinion that the responsiveness factor was representative of the general market orientation factor from the customer’s perspective, as the customer is not involved in the supplier’s internal operations and every marketoriented action is a response from the customer’s perspective. In addition to previously mentioned reasons for focusing on the customer, informal conversations with academics motivated us, in part, to focus on the customer, and to some extent we were motivated by the call of Kohli et al. (1993) to “assess the soundness of the measures” of the MARKOR scale (pg. 473). In the next stage, we modified the MARKOR scale items. Some of the 32 items of scale were modified to reflect the customer’s perspective. We did this by first selecting those questions about which we suspected the customer would have knowledge. This resulted in 20 items being selected. Next, we reworded the questions in order to adapt them to the customer’s perspective of the supplier’s responsiveness or market orientation. This was done in order to meet Churchill’s (1979) requirements that items are able to “convey different shades of meaning” (p. 68). Furthermore, slightly changing the original scale allows us to create better measures, as Churchill (1979) states, “By incorporating slightly different nuances of meaning in statements in the item pool, the researcher provides a better foundation for the eventual measure.” (p. 68). Table 2.2 provides the original scale of items and our modifications to them. We eliminated the items on which we concluded that customers could not provide an accurate assessment. Therefore, we did not include the following MARKOR questions in our questionnaire: 4, 8, 10, 12, 13, 16, 17, 18, 20, 24, 27, and 30. Question 4 states that, “We are slow to detect changes in our customers’ product preferences.” It was excluded because we came to the conclusion that no customer could decide the accurate level of research that a supplier conducted in house. Many internal supplier processes are kept secret and, therefore, the customer would not have the required knowledge to answer question 4. Similarly, question 8 on the MARKOR scale is, “In our business unit, intelligence on our competitors is generated independently by several departments;” customers would not know the inner working of several departments. In addition, Questions 8 and 10 of the MARKOR scale were excluded because 41
Page 2 and 3: ISBN 978-90-8980-055-8 © M. Abrahi
Page 4 and 5: Examination Committee Supervisor: P
Page 6 and 7: 2.3 DEVELOPMENT OF THE CONCEPTUAL M
Page 8 and 9: 5.1 RESEARCH FINDINGS 114 5.2 OVERA
Page 10 and 11: List of Tables Table 2.1 Representa
Page 12 and 13: PREFACE Oscar Wilde once said, “I
Page 14 and 15: Chapter 1 Introduction to the Thesi
Page 16 and 17: Figure 1.1 Mckinsey Survey Results
Page 18 and 19: 1.4 Scope PhD thesis This thesis fo
Page 20 and 21: Netherlands. We used the maximum li
Page 22 and 23: 2.1 Introduction A central tenant o
Page 24 and 25: only provide an assessment of the s
Page 26 and 27: Table 2.1 highlights several promin
Page 28 and 29: other hand, they later argue that m
Page 30 and 31: Therefore, there is a convergence i
Page 32 and 33: usiness performance, firms need to
Page 34 and 35: means is that the more better a str
Page 36 and 37: Supplier responsiveness or market o
Page 38 and 39: Naryandas, 1995). Further, idiosync
Page 42 and 43: they ask about intimate supplier in
Page 44 and 45: Table 2.2 Modified Items of the MAR
Page 46: Table 2.2 Modified Items of the MAR
Page 49 and 50: market intelligence, offering flexi
Page 51 and 52: We considered several scales before
Page 53 and 54: Table 2.7 Component Matrix Buyer Sa
Page 55 and 56: een monitored to make sure they gav
Page 57 and 58: satisfaction and strategic supplier
Page 59 and 60: 2.5 Measurement Model For creating
Page 61 and 62: In the third step, we used maximum
Page 63 and 64: incremental fit index (IFI) is one
Page 65 and 66: ange of 100-150 (Hair et al., 2006,
Page 67 and 68: indicator that has a link to custom
Page 69 and 70: and strengths and their stock marke
Page 71 and 72: accompanies any innovation, accordi
Page 73 and 74: important finding because it provid
Page 75 and 76: 3.1 Introduction The Netherlands, d
Page 77 and 78: possibility that firm size may infl
Page 79 and 80: Figure 3.1 The Netherlands and Unit
Page 81 and 82: comprehensive agreement on each oth
Page 83 and 84: Why do we pay more for an orange wi
Page 85 and 86: constructs, for cross-cultural fact
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products. Overall, the effects of s
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more diverse comparison. China is a
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Chapter 4 The Quest for Performance
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insurance premiums. Hence, perceptu
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theoretical contribution regarding
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should reinforce objective measures
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Table 4.2 Standardized Regression W
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Table 4.5 SEM Results Construct Dir
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4.7 Discussion We start this discus
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Jaowrski and Kohli (1993) provided
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Using the findings of our current s
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iii) iv) Indeed, there may not be m
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uyer firm performance through a ser
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specifically highlighted the import
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5.5 Practical Implications From a m
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Summary in English This dissertatio
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is that, when developing marketing
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isk by 0.98 standard deviations. Su
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collectivist culture and a Confucia
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Overwegende dat Verhoef en Leeflang
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van de waarde te communiceren dat d
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erkennen dat dit niet altijd een mo
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ij de vraag of cultureel risico voo
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Businessweek. (2012). S&P/BusinessW
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-industry-09012011.html Grewal, R.,
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Langerak, F. (2001). Effects of mar
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Quelch, J. (2007). How to brand an
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Verhoef, P. C., & Leeflang, P. S. H
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1. The name of the company where yo
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9.The supplier seems to have good i
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17. The supplier takes a very long
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25. If the supplier were to find ou
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33.Does your strategic supplier als
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41.To what degree do those specific
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Supplier Brand Value 51.How likely
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Appendix B Scatter Plot Diagrams fo
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