An empirical study on the impact of standardization of materials and purchasing procedures on purchasing and business performance

Purpose – Standardization of materials (i.e. replacement of several materials/components by a single component that has all the functionalities of the materials/components it replaces) is one important purchasing department decision. The primary objective of this study is to examine empirically the impact of standardization of materials and purchasing procedures (standardization in purchasing) on purchasing and business performance.Design/methodology/approach – To address our research problem, a survey instrument was developed and a structural model was hypothesized and tested using structural equation modeling. Data were collected from a field research on a sample of 306 manufacturing companies in Spain.Findings – The results of this research indicate that standardization in purchasing has a significant positive effect on both purchasing and business performance. Thus, standardizing materials and purchasing procedures is important and may help firms to meet their materials expenditure targets, and increa...

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