Becoming a preferred customer : the influence of contextual factors external to the dyadic buyer-supplier relationship

The strategic importance of purchasing and supply management has increased due to development within the supply markets. Firms are competing for the best resources from their suppliers and it is not self-evident that firms collaborating with their suppliers achieve a competitive advantage. Suppliers should, therefore, be seen as a key source of competitive advantage and innovation whereby a buyer should try to achieve a preferred customer status. Previous research has shown that the obtained resources from suppliers vary between buyers and their competitors which presents the appearance of a selective process by suppliers for their resources. Supplier satisfaction is a necessary condition for becoming a preferred customer which will consequently lead to achieving a competitive advantage. The main goal of this research is to investigate external factors, more precisely environmental uncertainty and dependency, to the dyadic buyer-supplier relationship influencing the tendency to assign a customer as preferred. This research replicates and extends previous empirical research on supplier satisfaction. The findings indicate that dependency directly influences the tendency to assign a customer as preferred. Furthermore, the findings also show that demand uncertainty negatively moderates the influence of supplier satisfaction on becoming a preferred customer.