THE ROLE OF RELATIONSHIP QUALITY IN THE STRATIFICATION OF VENDORS AS PERCEIVED BY CUSTOMERS

Companies implement preferred supplier programs to reduce their vendor relationships to a reasonable few. Consequently, vendors who do not e ffectively manage their customer-based relationships are strong candid ates for deletion from a customers list of long-term suppliers. The em ergence of preferred supplier programs suggests that businesses are be ginning to formally recognize and reward differences between their qua lified vendors. Vendor stratification is proposed as a framework for u nderstanding the evolution of preferred vendor programs. With the grow ing interest in relationship marketing, a study was conducted to empir ically examine the extent to which businesses use relationship quality perceptions to differentiate their qualified vendors. The findings su pport the notion that relationship quality is a higher-order construct that can be used as a basis for-developing vendor stratification syst ems. The article concludes with a discussion of the managerial and res earch implications of the study findings.