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The Role of Relationship Quality in the Stratification of Vendors as Perceived by Customers

Clemson University

Scott R. Swanson

East Carolina University

Scott W. Kelley

University of Kentucky

Companies implement preferred supplier programs to reduce their vendor relationships to a reasonable few. Consequently, vendors who do not effectively manage their customer-based relationships are strong candidates for deletion from a customer’s list of long-term suppliers. The emergence of preferred supplier programs suggests that businesses are beginning to formally recognize and reward differences between their qualified vendors. Vendor stratification is proposed as a framework for understanding the evolution of preferred vendor programs. With the growing interest in relationship marketing, a study was conducted to empirically examine the extent to which businesses use relationship quality perceptions to differentiate their qualified vendors. The findings support the notion that relationship quality is a higher-order construct that can be used as a basis for developing vendor stratification systems. The article concludes with a discussion of the managerial and research implications of the study findings.

Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, Vol. 26, No. 2, 128-142 (1998)
DOI: 10.1177/0092070398262004


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