The Nature of a Buyer-Supplier Relationship - A Case Study of the Grocery Industry

A previous article by the author demonstrated that the supplier of corrugated board in the relationship studied cannot be considered a strategic supplier. Despite this, the manufacturing company has chosen to go through with the efforts of supplier integration with the supplier of corrugated board. This indicates a difference in the driving forces and the future nature of the relationship between the case and the selected mode! of the development of supplier relationships, the so-called Strategic competitive Positioning model developed by Peter Hines. By comparing the driving forces behind the model and those in the case, this article attempts to predict the forthcoming nature of the relationship in the case studied.
The method used has been a case study. The case company is a manufacturer in the grocery retailing industry, and the relation studied is between the manufacturer and the supplier of corrugated board.
The analysis shows that since the product bought is a low complexity product the driving forces are weaker in our case than in the model. This is because one of the main driving forces in the automotive industry has been to involve the supplier in product development, which is not interesting to the same extent in the case.
The different character of the relationship in the case as compared to the SCP model is due to three major differences between the case studied and the model product characteristics, power differences and driving forces.