This study aims to empirically analyze the structural effects of partnership characteristics between buyers and suppliers on the performance in supply chains. To this end, an in-depth literature review was performed in advance and four partnership characteristics involving information sharing, participativeness, interdependence, solidarity were identified, and a research model was validated by incorporating collaboration, trust, satisfaction. To analyze data collected from 124 companies, structural equation modeling was employed to test hypotheses proposed in this study and the findings are shown as follow. First, the partnership between buyers and suppliers was confirmed to have a positive effect on collaboration, trust and satisfaction. Second, both of trust and satisfaction were found to positively influence collaboration. Third, our findings also validated that collaboration and trust between buyers and suppliers had significant influences on supply chain performance, however, we found no evidence of a statistically significant relationship between satisfaction and performance. Based on these findings, discussions on the implications of this study and suggestions for further research were given finally.