Driving forces behind the extra-EU shift: a choice-based contingent ranking experiment on purchasers’ preferences

In an ever-increasing global supply field companies nowadays lean towards sourcing outside of the EU. By dividing the concept of global sourcing into continental and transcontinental sourcing this paper aims to research the known driving forces behind the extra-EU shift derived from literature that is currently being experienced. This is done via a choice-based contingent ranking stated preference experiment held with purchasing experts. The driving forces were transformed into variables to serve as attributes of choice cards of hypothetical suppliers. During this experiment, the purchasing experts were asked to rank suppliers based on their preferences. The data gathered by the experiments held was analyzed with a conjoint analysis in SPSS. The conjoint analysis also allowed for the use of simulation cases, which were used to further research the observed preferences of purchasing experts. The analyzed data were used to validate the currently known driving forces behind the extra-EU shift derived from literature. With this data, the conclusion that purchasing experts value the price-to-quality ratio over everything else during the supplier selection process was drawn