BUYER SUPPLIER RELATIONSHIP. Business & Marketing Case Study

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Case Study
1 Characterize the different types of buyer-supplier relationship described in the case.
Between the suppliers and the buyers there exists three types of relationships that work together to keep the relationship going. For these relationship to keep going, these two must have established a great degree of trust amongst themselves, which in turn yields ore transparency. First is the transactional or otherwise known as a distant relationship. Sometimes the company gets to form a one-time relationship that results in a single transaction before the customer goes away completely. This can be mainly attributed to the competition in the market and also the supply market rarely changes and there is no complex decision making when it comes to purchases.
The value-added relationship where the buyer’s potential is medium. In such kind of an arrangement, there is more that the customer gets than what the seller gets. In other terms, the seller strives to ensure that the buyer gets exactly what he or she wants. Although this is not too evident because the company has two main observable ends. Finally, there is the collaborative relationship. This type of relationship has been built and solidified over time. Such that there is trust and the buyers have limited options (Charterina, et al. 320). Therefore, there is a lot of complex decisions made during the purchases because they are mostly in bulk and hence the process may take a while.
2 How and why do they differ from each other?
These types of relationship have their own distinct differences. Looking at the first type of relationship, it is evident that customers have no attachment to the company whatsoever and so they can decide to remain constant or shift to other suppliers. This speaks quite a lot about customer loyalty and the importance of any business to try and establish links related to the same. While no company is perfect, such a relationship gives so much uncertainty to the company because the customers are unstable thereby placing the entire business prospects in limbo because of the overall uncertainty. Therefore, the output is unstable as well.
The value-added relationship does not give the company much to work with. It is more stable but the returns are not as much as the company can be expected to put. This is because, the company really tries hard to ensure that it adds quality to its products at the expense of its profit margins, without really ha...