Antecedents and consequences of preferred customer status

Suppliers have evolved to become significant stakeholders in any companies’ business. Suppliers might seem hands-down or be taken for granted because of the vast number of available options nowadays, and buyers might consider the process of procurement to be simple and trivial. That might be true for the majority of purchased products, however, there are situations in which lack of supply resources or scarcity of certain products results in competition between customers to secure their access to the scarce goods or services offered by competent suppliers. In these situations, these highly demanded suppliers can pick and choose, giving birth to the concept of preferred customer status. Preferred customer status is a level of customer attractiveness in which the buying firm has become the preferred and chosen customer of a certain supplier and will benefit from exclusive offers like early access to innovations and the best brainpower from the supplier. The objective of this study is to investigate how buying firms can become more attractive and gain this preferred status and to analyse the benefits a buyer gains by being an attractive or preferred customer. The drivers and consequences are explored from the available literature and a model of preferred customer status is constructed to be tested. In this study, three antecedents and two consequences are tested using data from a survey study. Statistical equation modeling is used to form a model and partial least square method is used to test the model using SmartPLS software. The results of this study show that the bridging capability of a buyer or its ability to connect suppliers to interesting new markets or interesting potential partners has a significant effect on customer attractiveness. It also shows that both customer attractiveness and preferred customer status are positively influenced by the performance feedback that the buyer provides to the supplier. Furthermore, the study shows that common goals and strategic fit of the two parties has a positive effect on the chance of gaining preferred status but has no effect on customer attractiveness. Moreover, testing the consequences, it is found out that customer attractiveness and preferred customer status both increase the supplier’s willingness to share information with the customer and improve the mutual performance of the two companies. These results are strong indications of the benefits of being a preferred customer. They show that becoming more attractive leads to valuable information that suppliers share with the buyer and the supplier’s commitment and efforts to improve the mutual relationship. The results also show that in order to gain attractiveness, buyers can leverage their network of partners and to connect the target supplier to interesting markets. It is also observed that developing an effective feedback system and having regular discussions with supplier about the relationship is very desirable to suppliers and buyers should take it into account in order to gain preferred status. Finally, buyers should consider the strategic fit between the two parties when thinking about becoming closer and gaining preferred status

The impact of customer attractiveness: proposal of a road map for preferred customer status

Mestrado em GestãoNos mercados business-to-business (B2B) actuais, os fornecedores “só podem ter tempo e recursos para formar e satisfazer as expectativas de um número limitado de parceiros”. Uma vez que a alocação de recursos por parte dos fornecedores é feita através de uma selecção dos seus clientes, as empresas e organizações vêm-se obrigadas a mover esforços para captar a atenção dos seus principais fornecedores. Neste sentido, as empresas compradoras deverão apresentar-se mais atractivas que os seus concorrentes de forma a conseguirem obter recursos e oportunidades de trabalhar com os fornecedores e parceiros mais competentes. No entanto, a literatura actual apresenta lacunas sobre o conceito da atractividade do cliente e da sua relação com a alocação preferencial de recursos dos fornecedores. Este trabalho apresenta (i) o enquadramento dos antecedentes ao estatuto de cliente preferencial, (ii) a função que a atractividade do cliente representa nas relações comerciais, assim como (iii) o papel que desempenha na formação do estatuto de cliente preferencial. Para tal, é realizada uma revisão bibliográfica onde são correlacionados os três conceitos-chave das relações B2B – atractividade do cliente, satisfação dos fornecedores e estatuto de cliente preferencial. Por último, este trabalho conclui-se com a apresentação de um guia (road map) para obtenção do estatuto de cliente preferencial.In business-to-business (B2B) markets, current suppliers “may only have time and resources to train and meet the expectations of a limited number of partners”. Since the allocation of resources by suppliers is done through a selection of its clients, it is required that companies and organizations strive to capture the attention of its main suppliers. Thus, the purchasing companies presenting themselves as more attractive than their competitors will get better resources and opportunities to work with the most competent suppliers and partners. Due to the current literature gaps concerning the concept of customer attractiveness and its relation to the preferential allocation of resources from suppliers, this work presents (i) the antecedents of preferred customer status, (ii) the role that customer attractiveness represents in business relations, as well as (iii) the role it plays in the establishment of the preferred customer status. Accordingly, a literature review correlating the three key concepts of B2B relationships – customer attractiveness, supplier satisfaction and preferred customer status - is provided. Finally, this work concludes with a presentation of a road map for the achievement of preferred customer status

External knowledge sourcing from startups:An analysis of the pre-collaboration phase

As digitalization has caused major changes within various traditional industries, firms are forced to explore new technological paths and access knowledge beyond their boundaries. This dissertation focuses on knowledge provided by startups. Besides introducing search approaches and successful search strategies to identify startups, this work also provides insights into how corporations may become attractive partners for startups. In addition, the quality of startup ideas is compared with ideas originating from established suppliers. Finally, this dissertation examines the implications of engaging with startups

Preferred customer status, supplier satisfaction and their contingencies

Over the last decades, firms shift increasingly from traditional in-house value creation strategies to cooperative buyer–supplier relationships as a source of value creation and competitive advantage. To reap extensive benefits from relationships with suppliers, assuring supplier satisfaction and achieving preferred customer status are key for buyers. In the past, several mechanisms have been identified that influence supplier satisfaction and preferred customer status; however, little is known about the role of major contingency factors such as: product type, dependencies and power influencing them. This dissertation focuses on the potential of preferred customer status to mitigate the negative effects of buyer dependency, the influences of a buyer’s power usage on supplier satisfaction, and potential perception differences of preferred status in buyer-supplier relationships. Additionally, this dissertation adds novel methods (i.e. partial least squares point predictions and polynomial regressions with response surface modeling) together with a dyadic perspective to supplier satisfaction and preferred customer research. These methods enable an assessment of the predictive abilities of models, reveal curvilinear interaction effects and discover asymmetric relationships between factors, which would have not been discovered otherwise