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This paper discusses how a firm can become preferred customer, defined as a particular buying firm to whom the supplier allocates better resources than less preferred buyers. Two concepts play a central role for a firm aiming to become preferred customer: (i) customer attractiveness and (ii) supplier satisfaction. However, the current literature still lacks a clear discussion on the conceptual differences between these constructs and their attributes and is ambiguous with regard to the relationships between the concepts. This study addresses these shortcomings. We examine customer attractiveness and supplier satisfaction as distinct conceptual variables and test how these constructs relate to each other and to preferred customer status. We build upon practitioner input and survey data from 91 suppliers to do so. Our analyses show that the impact of customer attractiveness on preferential resource allocation from suppliers is significantly mediated by supplier satisfaction. These findings expand the current understanding of these concepts. In addition, our findings might help managers better evaluate their relationships with suppliers and align their strategies accordingly to obtain better resources from their suppliers.

Leveraging the supply chain for competitive resources remains a key challenge for supply chain management. Drawing on social exchange theory, this study examines SCM practices that help firms to acquire better supplier resources than rival firms that source from the same supplier. We provide a clearer picture of coercive and competence power, and goodwill and competence trust as key mechanisms to improve supplier resource allocation of physical and innovation resources. We analyze survey data of 185 supplying firms using structural equation modeling. Our analyses yield several interesting findings. First, contrary to other studies, we find that coercive tactics do not necessarily affect supplier resource allocation negatively and goodwill trust does not inherently affect supplier resource allocation positively. Second, the results of a multigroup analysis indicate that the dependence of a supplier on the buying firm—in terms of share in turnover—affects the relationship between the trust dimensions and supplier resource allocation more than it does the power dimensions. Third, goodwill trust only affects supplier resource allocation when the buyer has a large share in the supplier's turnover, while competence trust is more effective if buyers account for a small share in the supplier's turnover. The contributions of our study for the supply chain management and social exchange theory literature are discussed.

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In this article, we study the antecedents of supplier innovativeness and supplier pricing.Based on an extensive literature review, we identify different types of antecedents: (1) 'technical' antecedents, which include the capabilities of suppliers to innovate (such as their level of R&D investment) and (2) 'behavioural' antecedents, which focus on the position of the buyer as a supplier's preferred customer. We hypothesise that the two antecedents influence supplier innovativeness in a positive way. Furthermore, we analyse supplier pricing behaviour. We assume that suppliers' awareness of their capabilities to innovate might provoke them to charge unfair prices, while preferred customer status may reverse this tendency and lead to more benevolent supplier pricing behaviour. We test the conceptual framework using a sample of 166 buyer-supplier relations. We find out that technical and behavioural antecedents can explain supplier innovativeness to a large extent, with the role of preferred customer status striking out. Remarkably, whereas we expected that suppliers who are involved in innovation would be found to charge higher prices for their contributions to newly developed products, our results show that this effect is not statistically significant. The missing link between supplier pricing and supplier innovativeness can encourage firms to engage in collaborative innovation, at all, because buyers do not need to fear being overcharged. Implementing a preferred customer policy can improve the conditions for innovating with suppliers.