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

some respondents would not provide their company name; instead, they typed in random letters or
scant information regarding their line of business. Therefore, such responses were discarded. We used
the list wise deletion method which involves selecting those cases that were incompletely filled.
The buyer’s primary business was most frequently mentioned as both industrial and consumer
markets 49%, then consumer markets 32.3%, and industrial markets only 18.7%. Most buyers in our
sample stated an average of 9.72 years of buying experience, out of which 7.36 years were spent as
strategic buyers for their current employers. Of our sample, 30.9% worked for upper management
meaning senior managers and above, whereas 53.1% worked for mid-management. Approximately
one-third (i.e., 35.4%) of the strategic buyers provided service-based market offerings, 23.1%
provided goods as market offerings, and the remaining 41.5% offered a mixture of both goods and
services as their market offering.
Table 2.12
Descriptive Statistics
Sample Description
Percentage
n=164
Type of Market
Percentage
Industrial and Consumer Markets 49.0
Consumer Markets 32.3
Industrial Markets 18.7
Number of Years of Buying Experience
Years
Average Buying Experience 9.72
Average Strategic Buying Experience 7.36
Level of Management
Percentage
Upper Management 30.9
Middle Management 53.1
Type of Market Offering
Percentage
Service Based Market offering 35.4
Goods Based Market offering 23.1
Goods and Service based market offering 41.5
Response rate 6.0
In order to assess non-response bias, early and late responses were compared (Donney &
Cannon, 1997). About 80% of our initial responses came during the first panel request to fill out our
questionnaire. The aspects along which early and late responses were compared were by the following
descriptive variables: the number of years of purchasing experience, role and level in the organization,
and familiarity with the strategic supplier. There were no statistically significant differences between
early and late responses. Therefore, non-response bias is not a serious concern for this study.
For issues regarding normality of the current data set please refer to appendix B. We had some
issues with skewness, but that was rectified by a square root transformation of the data.
2.4.3 Multicollinearity
We check for multicollinearity by using the VIF statistic and ran four linear regressions with a new
dependent variable each time. The dependent variables in order were supplier responsiveness, IdRR,
56