A model of buyer-supplier interaction in UK grocery retailing

Abstract

This paper integrates the diverse and copious literature on power and conflict handling with that on buyer-supplier interaction in a variety of countries and industries, together with current knowledge on UK grocery retailing in particular, to create a model to elucidate the nature of the relationship between a UK grocery retail buyer and a manufacturer's representative. Elements for inclusion in the model are offered, and their potential importance supported by evidence from the literature. Finally, all elements of the model are integrated into a single structure. The first premise of the model is that the buyer-supplier relationship can be described as being, to some degree, distributive or integrative, the former approach being associated with adversarial, transaction-based approaches and the latter with cooperative or partnership approaches. The wide range of current theory and past research suggests that many factors may influence the nature of a buyer-supplier relationship on this distributive versus integrative scale. To integrate all of these and structure the model, these factors are organized and discussed under eight headings: power, nature of negotiation, personal factors, organizational factors, retailer objectives (and how they contrast with supplier objectives), ambient social pressure, political and government pressure, and finally, stance of negotiating partner and inter-firm communications.