International Purchasing Research Articles

PERAN E-WOM MEMEDIASI VIRAL MARKETING TERHADAP KEPUTUSAN PEMBELIAN JAFRA COSMETICS INTERNASIONAL DI KOTA KENDARI

Decisions regarding purchasing JAFRA Cosmetics International products are often influenced by other individuals, friends and communities. Along with technological advances and the development of social media with viral marketing E-WOM has an impact in terms of positive and negative statements of consumer behavior. The purpose of the study was to determine the influence of viral marketing on purchasing decisions of Jafra products mediated by E-WOM. This study used an explanatory type of research using a quantitative approach. The population of this study is Jafra consumers in Kendari City. The sampling technique uses Purposive sampling of 50 respondents from consumers of Jafra products and data analysis techniques using Smart-PLS. The results showed that Viral Marketing does not directly affect Purchasing Decisions, but the existence of E-WOM is able to mediate Viral Marketing to affect JAFRA Cosmetics International Purchasing Decisions in Kendari City. The mediation variable model found in this study is that E-WOM has a role as a perfect mediation (Complete mediation). In this case, E-WOM has a greater impact on more effective marketing communications.

Strategic Analysis of Tesco's International Purchasing and Supply Chain Management: Challenges, Opportunities, and Future Directions

This review paper examines Tesco's international purchasing and supply-chain management strategies, focusing on its operations and strategic initiatives. Tesco, a prominent global retailer, faces significant challenges and opportunities in a competitive market environment. Through a SWOT analysis, Tesco's strengths in efficient logistics and expansive market reach are highlighted, alongside weaknesses such as environmental sustainability concerns and operational inefficiencies. The study also explores Tesco's value chain, emphasizing its primary activities like inbound logistics and outbound distribution, as well as supporting activities such as human resource management and technological innovations like RFID. Future challenges, including environmental sustainability and market expansion in Asia and Africa, are discussed, with recommendations provided to enhance Tesco's sustainable development and competitive position in the global retail landscape.

Political risk and corporate international supply chain

This paper examines the effect of countries’ political risk on corporate international supply chain. Using the survey data of firms in 32 countries, we find that political risk decreases firms’ purchasing proportion from foreign suppliers. We also find that the effect is less pronounced for firms with business association membership and whose main market is international, and firms in countries with better institutional environments and higher degree of development. Studies on influencing channels show that political risk decreases corporate international purchasing through the increase in corporate informal payments and the decrease in willingness to apply for import licenses. Finally, we find that the reduced corporate international purchasing accompanied by political risk decreases firms’ capacity utilization, expected sales, and research and development activities. Collectively, our findings provide new evidence on the role of political risk for firms’ international purchasing decisions.

Managing from a distance in international purchasing and supply

International purchasing and supply management (PSM) teams have long faced the visibility and understandability challenges of managing geographically dispersed and culturally distant suppliers. Problems arising from inadequate monitoring and control over suppliers can be attributed to geographical and cultural distance, capability gaps, weak institutions, and supply market dynamism. With transaction costs theory as our lens, we examine how international geographically and culturally distant purchasing and supply management (PSM) teams control emerging economy suppliers with formal management controls. We use interview survey data on 339 international customer-Chinese supplier relationships using supplier perceptions of the extent to which performance measurement and monitoring practices are used by their primary customer in the purchase reorder decision and control. The results demonstrate that the cultural and, to a lesser extent, geographical distance between the customer and the supplier is associated with more extensive use of formal management controls. Also, we find the relationship between geographical or cultural distance and the importance of performance measurement is strengthened for suppliers of complex components.

Intelligent purchasing: How artificial intelligence can redefine the purchasing function

Artificial intelligence (AI) can affect all of a company’s functions, not least the purchasing department. In addition to automating and optimizing existing processes, AI opens up new opportunities for purchasers to undertake new, strategic, collaborative, enduring missions. AI enables complex, strategic decision-making in an unpredictable, hostile environment. This article analyzes to what extent AI can improve the performance of the purchasing department. First, a review is undertaken of how AI is used in purchasing. Thereafter, the research follows an exploratory, inductive, and qualitative approach based on a multiple case study of the following technologies: (1) the Synertrade automated international purchasing system; (2) the Silex matching system; (3) SAP Ariba decision support; (4) Jaggaer supplier relations management; and (5) the Ideapoke collaborative ideation and innovative project management platform. The present study’s contributions lie in its redefinition of the purchasing function, of the purchaser’s role, of supplier relationship management policy, and of interdepartmental collaboration, involving, for example, Marketing and R&D.

Digitalization and International Online Sales: Antecedents of Purchase Intent

This paper seeks to contribute to the literature on consumers’ online purchasing behavior as an international phenomenon. Specifically, to address consumers’ Internet skills, website perceived ease of use, and website trust as antecedents of purchase intent. With a cross-national dataset of 788 consumers from different countries, five hypotheses are tested, and a model is suggested. The findings highlight that consumers’ Internet skills and website perceived ease of use positively impact purchase intent. Interestingly, trust in the website does not. To overcome the cases where consumers feel a lack of trust, this study highlights the need for website usability and adapting to consumers’ Internet skills. The findings also illustrate that online shopping is a global phenomenon, a finding that was made possible by analyzing a large international dataset. Future studies can benefit from an online international purchasing approach, which takes the internationality of consumers’ purchasing into account.

Behavior Modality of Internet Technology on Reliability Analysis and Trust Perception for International Purchase Behavior

The proliferation of Internet technology and balance of composition in major feature of many visual products have been advantageous for businesses and changed the distribution channels through which industries reach their consumers. The intensive development of Internet technology and the increasing popularity of online shopping have further changed customers’ purchasing behaviors and the methods by which companies disseminate their video advertisements. The main research question that this study intends to answer is, “What do users do when a YouTube advertisement appears? Do they avoid or confront them?” The aim of this study is to explore the perceptions and related behaviors of international purchasing and consumers’ trust of YouTube advertisements. Statistical analyses focus on the demographics of a sample population in Thailand. The findings are based on data obtained by a questionnaire, the results of which were analyzed by t-test and multiple regression. The results indicate that YouTube advertising has a significant effect on behavioral trends. Moreover, the subjects in the sample reported that they are more likely to avoid YouTube ads than confront them. The study subjects have low satisfaction with YouTube advertising, and males have significantly lower satisfaction than females. This study also analyzes the reliability of trust perception toward purchasing. The results indicate that the reliability is greater than 90% at an α level of 5% and a 95% confidence interval.

Paying for Mitigation: How New Zealand Can Contribute to Others’ Efforts

Purchasing international emission reductions (IERs) can help New Zealand make a more ambitious and cost-effective contribution toward global climate change mitigation and support developing countries in accelerating their low-emission transition. However, New Zealand must avoid past mistakes by ensuring international purchasing does not derail its own decarbonisation pathway. Furthermore, the Paris Agreement has fundamentally changed how countries will trade IERs over the 2021–30 period. This working paper, which evolved under Motu’s ETS Dialogue process from 2016 to 2018, focuses on how we can balance our international and domestic mitigation efforts. It explores how many IERs we may want, how we should integrate international mitigation support with participants’ obligations under the New Zealand Emissions Trading Scheme (NZ ETS), and what mechanisms we can use to fund international mitigation effectively. Fundamentally, the New Zealand government will need to ensure that all IERs counted toward its targets and accepted in the NZ ETS have environmental integrity and are both approved and not double counted by seller and buyer governments. This paper presents a working model for New Zealand’s purchase of IERs, in which the quantity is controlled by government, purchasing is managed by government for the foreseeable future (with potential participation by private entities), and the quantity is factored into decisions on the NZ ETS cap and price management mechanisms. If NZ ETS participants are able to purchase IERs in the future, then a quantity limit should apply as a percentage of the surrender obligation and the volume should offset other supply under the cap. The paper also highlights an innovative “climate team” mechanism for international climate change cooperation that could facilitate purchasing by the New Zealand government. Two companion working papers address interactions between decisions on international purchasing and the choice of NZ ETS cap and price management mechanisms. The three working papers elaborate on an integrated proposal for managing unit supply, prices, and linking in the NZ ETS that was presented in Kerr et al. (2017).

Organizational structure characteristics’ influences on international purchasing performance in different purchasing locations

This study contributes to the understanding of how firms should structure their purchasing organization to improve their performance. While the research into structural characteristics’ impacts on purchasing performance is evolving, it is still incomplete, especially concerning the contingencies on different purchasing environments. Drawing on ideas from the organizational information processing and contingency approaches as well as the international business literature, the present study proposes a model in which three key organizational structure characteristics – centralization, standardization, and specialization – are associated with purchasing performance. This study posits that the relationships are contingent on a purchasing location’s formal and informal institutional context. Based on a sample of 195 German manufacturers, the model is empirically tested using structural equation modeling. The findings support the relevance of organizational structure characteristics for international purchasing and firm performance and they also support the notion that the effects are contingent on the purchasing location’s institutional context.

Implications of Land-Grabbing on the Ecological Balance of Brazil

In the global free-market, natural resource scarcity and opportunities for preserving the local environment are fostering international purchasing of large extensions of land, mainly for agricultural use. These land transactions often involve land cover change (i.e., through deforestation) or a shift from extensive or traditional to intensive agricultural practices. In Brazil, the land appropriation by foreign investors (i.e., the so-called “land-grabbing”) is affecting natural capital availability for local communities to a different extent in the very different territorial entities. At the same time, Brazilian investors are purchasing land in other countries. Ecological footprint accounting is one appropriate lens that can be employed to visualize the aggregated effect of natural capital appropriation and use. The aim of this paper is to provide a first estimate on the effect of land-grabbing on the ecological balance of Brazil through calculating the biocapacity embodied in purchased lands in the different states of Brazil. The results show that Brazil is losing between 9 to 9.3 million global hectares (on a gross basis, or a net total of 7.7 to 8.6 million of global hectares) of its biocapacity due to land-grabbing, when considering respectively a “cropland to cropland” (i.e., no land-cover change) and a “total deforestation” scenario. This represents a minimum estimate, highlighting the need for further land-grabbing data collection at the subnational scale. This analysis can be replicated for other countries of the world, adjusting their ecological balance by considering the biocapacity embodied in international transactions of land.

Ambiguity aversion in buyer-seller relationships: A contingent-claims and social network explanation

Negotiations between buyers and sellers (or suppliers) of goods and services have become increasingly important due to the growing trend towards international purchasing, outsourcing and global supply networks together with the high uncertainty associated with them. This paper examines the effect of ambiguity aversion on price negotiations using multiple-priors-based real options with non-extreme outcomes. We study price negotiation between a buyer and seller in a dual contingent-claims setting (call option holding buyer vs. put option holding seller) to derive optimal agreement conditions under ambiguity with and without social network effects. We find that while higher ambiguity aversion raises the threshold for commitment for the seller, it has equivocal effects on the buyer's negotiation prospects in the absence of network control. Conversely when network position and relative bargaining power are accounted for, we find the buyer's implicit price (or negotiation threshold) decreases (or increases) unequivocally with increasing aversion to ambiguity. Extending extant real options research on price negotiation to the case of ambiguity, this set of results provides new insights into the role of ambiguity aversion and network structures in buyer-seller relationships, including how they influence the range of negotiation agreement between buyers and sellers. The results also help assist managers in formulating robust buying/selling strategies for bargaining under uncertainty. By knowing their network positions and gathering background information or inferring the other party's ambiguity tolerance beforehand, buyers and sellers can anticipate where the negotiation is heading in terms of price negotiation range and mutual agreement possibilities.

Evolving Purchasing and Supply Organizations: A contingency model for structural alternatives

Purchasing and Supply Management (PSM) is under significant pressure to find levers to further increase its contribution to corporate goals. In order to improve performance in line with expectations, Purchasing and Supply Organizations (PSOs) have to evolve continuously. To help address this challenge, a comprehensive contingency framework of PSO structures is presented. The framework is based on existing literature on PSO contingency factors as well as analysis of two case companies. The findings highlight the importance of taking a contingency perspective for understanding the PSO and combining a detailed view of macro-level structural dimensions with micro-level characteristics. These macro-level dimensions comprise category, business unit, geography and activity. The micro-level characteristics comprise centralization, formalization, specialization, participation and standardization. From a theoretical perspective, the contingency framework opens up insights that can be leveraged in future studies in the fields of hybrid PSOs, global sourcing organizations, and International Purchasing Offices (IPOs). From a practical standpoint, an assessment of external and internal contingencies and their relation to specific structural dimensions and characteristics provides the opportunity for more consciously evolving the PSO to continue to improve PSM's contribution.

Managing distance in international purchasing and supply: a systematic review of literature from the resource-based view perspective

The aim of this research is to find out how the extant literature on international purchasing and supply management (PSM) covers the elements of capability from the perspective of distance. A priori, we form a framework of capability driving elements and conclude that distance—in its multiple dimensions—is the fundamental management aspect in international PSM. Equipped with analytical frameworks and a bottom–up process for identifying emergent themes, a systematic literature review was conducted on a representative sample of scholarly literature on international PSM, using the NVivo analysis software and a data display as tools. We identify several capability relevant themes from the literature, and provide a distance-based a posteriori conceptualisation of international PSM, founded in the information processing theory, with the source-user, user-user and source-source distance types driving the information processing requirements, and loading avoidance, policy-based and enhancement mechanisms determining the information processing capacity.

The role of geographical distance and its efficacy on global purchasing practices

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to investigate the extent to which the geographical location of and thus the geographical distance between buyer and supplier impact on the efficacy of purchasing practices (i.e. strategic purchasing management, tactical purchasing management, relational purchasing management) in terms of operational performance.Design/methodology/approachThe authors utilise cross-country data collected through the International Purchasing Survey group across a variety of countries and industry sectors. The authors conduct exploratory factor analysis to assess construct validity and regression analysis to test the varying effects of purchasing practices on operational performance. The authors split the sample to compare potential differences in the efficacy of purchasing practices between buyers and suppliers through geographical characteristics.FindingsThe results indicate that the efficacy of purchasing practices does indeed vary depending on differences in geographical location. Specifically, the authors identify that in cases where the buyer and supplier are located in the same country tactical and relational purchasing tools have a positive impact on operational performance. However, in cases where they are situated in different countries none of the purchasing tools seems to significantly improve operational performance.Originality/valueResearch that has taken a cross-country perspective on the efficacy of supply chain practices is surprisingly sparse. Since most supply chains are becoming more and more global it is important to consider the geographical location of the supply chain members when assessing the performance benefits of supply chain practices such as purchasing tools. Thus, the authors introduce and test the concept of geographical distance on the efficacy of purchasing practices at the dyadic level. To test the implications of geographical distance for purchasing practices the authors use a large-scale cross-country survey.

The development of international purchasing capabilities: a comparative study of the four largest Swedish construction firms

ABSTRACTWhile there is a growing stream of research addressing purchasing issues, we know little about how the internationalization of purchasing activities unfolds. The study contributes to the sparsely empirically and theoretically substantiated field of international purchasing by, based on empirical support, providing an analytical framework which can improve our understanding of international purchasing by offering an integrated view of a business relationship perspective and a capabilities perspective. The purpose of this article is to track the actual prerequisites behind the development of international purchasing capabilities. In this article, we study the nearly simultaneous implementation of international purchasing strategies in the four largest construction firms in Sweden to be able to compare and contrast the underlying mechanisms and outcomes of these processes. We find that the firms that had developed capabilities incrementally in supplier relationships were better able to reap cost--benefits from international purchasing than firms that had not.

Insights of the Strategic Approach of Global Sourcing and the Modes of International Sourcing Strategies

<p>The modes of international sourcing entry strategies still an unusual research topic in International Business. The different entry modes still not well investigate in the literature. The increase in the research related with Global Sourcing reveal the importance to deeply investigate this subject. Recent research investigated the International Purchasing Offices as part of Global Sourcing. Other modes of international sourcing entry modes still not analyzed with the Global Sourcing and International Sourcing approaches. This article aims to investigate how the conceptual models of Global Sourcing and the modes of international sourcing entry strategies can be integrated. A literature review was made in order to develop this analysis. As a result, we present a set of entry modes that can be related with international sourcing and another list related with Global Sourcing. Though this article is limited by its theoretical approach, the model proposed here could be used to an empirical research.</p>

The Influence of Organizational Structure Characteristics on International Purchasing Performance in Different Sourcing Locations

This study provides a detailed understanding of how firms structure their organization to foster international purchasing (IPP) and firm performance (FP) in different purchasing locations.It proposes a moderated mediation model in which organizational structure characteristics are associated with IPP and FP building on transaction cost economics and the resource-based view. We posit that the relationships are contingent on the national context of the purchasing location.Taking a sample of German firms, we test the model using structural equation modeling. We find that centralization, specialization and configuration are positively associated with IPP which is positively related to FP. The specialization and PP relationship is stronger for purchasing locations in developing countries, while the configuration and IPP relationship is stronger for those in industrialized economies.

The role psychic distance and supplier reputation in international purchasing

By taking the perspective of buyer firms faced with the choice of choosing between foreign-based suppliers, we investigate the effects of distance between the buyer and the supplier, and supplier’s...

O efeito mediador de riscos operacionais sobre compras internacionais e desempenho

The international purchasing managers face enormous challenges to achieve the enterprises purchasing performances goals due to operational risks such as greater distances from supplies resources, longer cycle services requests and reduced ability of the operational control. In this direction, this study aimed to verify how operational risks influences the relationship between international purchases and purchasing performance under the point of view of managers in the energy and electroelectronics companies located in Brazil. For this, a descriptive research of quantitative type was carried out. The research, preceded by exploratory study and pre-testing of questionnaire, used a sample of managers composed of 149 respondents. The data collected, after purification by exploratory factor analysis, were treated by the technique of linear regression and structural equation modeling. The result showed there is no evidence, at statistical significance level (α ≤ 0.05), that operational risk has mediating effect on the international purchases and performance relationship. This result evidenced that operational risk was a relevant element to the managers but without direct influence on the relationship between international purchasing and its performance, suggesting that the operational risks were intrinsic to the management of the international purchasing to attend the performance. Keywords: operational risks, global supply chain, international purchase, purchasing performance.

Purchasing Social Responsibility Activities in Malaysia: A focus in Labour, Health, and Safety

Globalisation of companies has led to international purchasing trend with multiple suppliers worldwide. However there were many issues pertaining to labour and health & safety of Asian suppliers. The purchasing function or professionals (purchasing managers) have the most interfaces and influences to suppliers and they are capable to play the most important role in suppliers’ labour issues. This qualitative, transcendental phenomenological study describes the experience of purchasing managers with regard to purchasing social responsibility (PSR) activities in labour, health and safety. In depth interviews were conducted with 16 purchasing managers working in electrical and electronics multinational corporations located in northern region of Malaysia. There are eight core themes described the nature of PSR activities experienced by purchasing managers. First, EICC code enhances PSR activities but labour standards are new and less priority than health and safety. Second, purchasing managers working in American based electrical and electronics multinational corporations are more experience in PSR activities compared with purchasing managers working in corporations with headquarters in other countries. Third, supplier audit is the most common PSR activity but it was only conducted for critical suppliers. Fourth, supplier selfassessment triggers supplier audit or improvement plan. Fifth, supplier selection only requires basic compliance in labour, health and safety standards. Sixth, short training of labour, health and safety standards is commonly arranged for all suppliers. Seventh, corrective actions are used to manage suppliers’ labour violations in occupational safety, wages, working hours, dormitories and holding of migrant passports. Eighth, issues encountered with suppliers on PSR activities included labour standards increase material pricing, suppliers reluctant to adhere to labour standards and workers preferred longer work hours in order to gain higher wages.