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Preferred customership and its interrelationship with sustainable development within a buyer-supplier relationship

Veldscholten, Bram (2022) Preferred customership and its interrelationship with sustainable development within a buyer-supplier relationship.

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Abstract:The perspective on buyer-supplier relationships has changed to buyers trying to be as attractive as possible. This research tries to examine the benefits and antecedents of a preferred customer status, and the existing literature on the triple bottom line, to be able to gain a clear knowledge on the interrelationship between a preferred customer status and sustainable development to enhance existing literature in this field. A preferred customer may potentially be a good starting point to collectively work on sustainable development within a buyer-supplier relationship and may influence the outcome and efficiency of sustainability initiatives. The other way around, may sustainability efforts of a buyer influence its potential to gain a preferred customer status. This research is set up as a case study in combination with a literature review. In the case study two buyers and five suppliers of Company X are interviewed. The findings confirm most of the antecedents found in literature and add mutual dependency and customer attractiveness on sustainability as new antecedents. The result of this research indicates that there is indeed an interrelationship between a preferred customer status and sustainable development. Sustainability efforts of a buyer influence the antecedents of a preferred customer status which influence the relation between supplier satisfaction and preferred customership. Also do the results indicate that a preferred customer status is positively influencing the ability to collaborate on sustainable development within a buyer-supplier relationship, with it increasing the efficiency of this sustainable development. Future research can be conducted with a bigger sample size while using also quantitative date, to make it more generalizable than this research. Also, a better separation between the antecedents of customer attractiveness, supplier satisfaction and a preferred customer status should be made.
Item Type:Essay (Bachelor)
Faculty:BMS: Behavioural, Management and Social Sciences
Subject:83 economics, 85 business administration, organizational science
Programme:International Business Administration BSc (50952)
Link to this item:https://purl.utwente.nl/essays/90812
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