Buyer-Supplier Relation

While selecting the best supplier signals the completion of one goal of purchasing, it represents
the beginning of an entirely new series of interactions between buyer and supplier. The resulting
relationship will in large part determine the outcome of such goals as price and quality.

The Negotiation Process:

The negotiation process can essentially be understood as a four-stage process. The four stages of
the negotiation process are preparation, opening, bargaining, and closure.

Preparations for Negotiation:

1. User related

A review of buyer-supplier relationship

typologies: Progress, Problems, and Future
directions

Purpose
The purpose of this study is to review the existing typologies of buyer-supplier relationships
(BSRs) in the literature, to critically assess their dimensions and underlying assumptions, and to
propose a more complete BSR typology and future directions for BSR typology research.
Design/methodology/approach
This study takes a conceptual approach in highlighting the limitations of existing BSR typologies
and synthesizing their key typology-defining variables when proposing an alternative BSR
typology.
Findings
The proposed BSR typology is based on alternative behavioral assumptions: bounded rationality
and choice-determinism, and uses relationalism, supplier dependence and buyer dependence as
the typology-defining variables. This BSR typology captures four prominent BSR types in the
extant literature (i.e. market/discrete relationship, captive-buyer/supplier-dominant relationship,
captive-supplier/buyer-dominant relationship and strategic/bilateral partnership) and four new
BSR types developed in this study (i.e. supplier-led collaboration, buyer-led collaboration,
competitive/win–lose partnership, and free will/voluntary collaboration).
Research limitations/implications
The performance implications of the new BSR types have yet to be empirically tested; however,
empirical approaches for future research are discussed.
Originality/value
As BSR typology research has been conducted over the years, a thorough review and systematic
assessment of the extant research in terms of fundamental assumptions, typology-defining
variables, overall progress and limitations becomes an important reflective task in guiding future
research efforts toward the collective advancement in this line of inquiry. Departing from the
existing literature, this study also uses more realistic BSR assumptions and a more complete set
of typology-defining variables in developing an alternative BSR typology, arguably more
complete and more theoretically sound than the previous BSR typologies in the literature.