Market-driving strategy implementation through global supplier relationships

The global supplier network is becoming an increasingly important asset for many firms. If successfully managed, supplier relationships may support the firm's strategic orientation and become a sustainable advantage on the global market. A key question is thus how the firm can develop and maintain such relationships. The market-driving strategy has recently been advanced as a more pro-active type of market orientation that aims to reconfigure the supply chain, change the nature of competition and the values of the customers. We especially investigate how market-driving firms can develop their supplier relationships so that they actively support this strategy. We present a set of propositions that specify factors critical for the development of the market-driving firm's supplier relationships and develop a theoretical framework that specifies how these different factors interact in order to strengthen the market-driving orientation of a supplier relationship. The results are generated from an in-depth case study of IKEA's corporate supplier strategy and of supplier relationships in the Russian and Polish markets. (C) 2011 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.