An empirical study of EDI trading partner selection criteria in customer-supplier relationships

Electronic data interchange (EDI)-enabled trading partnerships are even more important now that EDI and electronic commerce-based technologies are underlying long-term strategic business partnerships. This study investigates the trading partner selection criteria used by firms in a customer-supplier dyad and their relative importance according to EDI implementation level is also established. Using the survey method implementing paired questionnaires for a dyad of customer-supplier firms, the study gathered data from 152 respondent firms. Factor analysis yielded six factors in trading partner selection: strategic commitment, trading partner flexibility, joint partnering for EDI, readiness for high-level EDI, EDI infrastructure, and communications. MANOVA and t-tests were used to test differences in the means of the responses of customer and supplier firms to the selection criteria. Overall, customer firms assigned higher means to all six factors than did the supplier firms. The gap between the two groups of firms were widest for the factors readiness for high-level EDI, trading partner flexibility, and communications.

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