산업재 거래관계에서 유연성(flexibility)의 역할에 관한 연구 -선행요인의 구성 및 관계성과에 미치는 영향-

Transaction between industrial suppliers and their buyers in business markets increasingly take place in the form of long-term business relationships. These relationships are governed through formal or informal agreements. Dynamic business markets are also forcing B2B marketers to create flexibility in their firms. However, buyers are bound in their rationality and find it impossible to contemplate all possible future contingencies. The more formal and detailed the contracts they conclude, the likelier it becomes that at least one buyer is going to perceive a need to adjust the initial agreement as environmental events unfold. In this case, the actor relies upon industrial supplier’s flexibility. Our study purpose is to examine the consequences of flexibility on relationship quality. For a supplier, remaining flexible in buyer relationships can be difficult because keeping the resources required in the production process available is a complex and costly task. Responding to buyer requests for adjustments may create value for the buyer while reducing value for the supplier if it has a negative impact on operative efficiency or effectiveness in the focal relationship or in other buyer relationships. Hence, managers want to know whether such investments into flexibility will pay off. In addition, we examine the antecedents of supplier flexibility. Buyers need to know whether supplier will modify existing agreements in cases where environmental factors change. Insufficient flexibility can lead to problems, such as having to accept services which no longer meet the buyer’s needs. Accordingly, identifying indicators of supplier flexibility is an important objective for managers involved in the purchasing process of services. We presented a comprehensive constructive model consisting of components of industrial flexibility and relational factors and then proposes the research model based on prior research and studies about relationships among components of industrial flexibility and relational performance factors. The general model is applied to organization buying center of comprehensive industrial markets. Data were gathered from respondents who work in industrial buying centers. This paper deals with suppliers’ flexibility and presents empirical results from the market research sector including outcome variables (market-uncertainty, relationship-specific investments, mutuality, opportunism, long-term orientation, planning, conflict management). Empirical results suggest that supplier flexibility is an important determinant of buyer satisfaction, relationship quality, trust, and commitment. All of the hypotheses involving flexibility are supported, with the exception of the effect of market uncertainty on flexibility. One of the important results of the empirical tests is that our focal construct plays a critical role in a relationship. In all three equations, measuring the impact of flexibility on the dimensions of relationship performance (H5a, H5b, H5c, H54), we observe high values for the model fit index. This means that soft behavioral factors contribute almost as much to the explanation of certain measures of performance as the actual transactional relationship itself. For many managers, this may still be surprising, but it is in line with current thinking across different management disciplines in which intangible factors of economic life receive increasing attention. The results discussed here represent a first step towards a better understanding of the flexibility construct in buyer-supplier relationships. Future research may be directed usefully towards exploring the impact of flexibility on economic performance of relationships, because although relationship performance represents an important goal in B2B marketing, in companies’ hierarchy of objectives it only occupies an intermediary level. Super-ordinate goals remain located in the financial sphere. A two-sided research method would be useful in assessing differences in actors’ evaluation of the degree of flexibility, the uncertainty and other critical variables. Also, although the market research industry is an important case of the B2B sector, different markets vary along such dimensions as immateriality, buyer integration, or buyer interaction. The effects of these moderating variables on the causal relationships examined here remain unclear. Finally, this study focuses on supplier–buyer dyads. Given current interest in networks, studying the role of flexibility in such sets of interrelated dyads would be a valuable contribution.