Corporate culture and its impact on supplier satisfaction: Is good relational behaviour always relevant in buyer-supplier relations?

The increasing importance of preferred customer status and supplier satisfaction unveils new opportunities to gain competitive advantages as buying firm. Relational behaviour plays a major role to have satisfied suppliers. The goal of this quantitative research paper is to identify the interaction effect of a suppliers’ corporate culture and relational behaviour on supplier satisfaction through polynomial regression. Results show that intensifying the relationship with suppliers, that have a high focus on stability and control and that are not highly flexible, has the most potential to improve supplier satisfaction through relational behaviour.