Purchasing managers from multiple industries were sampled in order to arrive at a sufficiently large sample size. Past research suggests that responses can vary across purchasing and sales settings (Weitz, . 1981; Churchill et al., 1985) . In the present study, no control exists for either the buy-type or industry. Future research should examine the potential differences that may exist among industries, as well as categories of buying such as commodities vs. make-to-buy and strategic purchases vs. MRO procurement. Finally, the reader should be aware that an assumption of the study is that suppliers were independent entities and not subsidiaries of larger multinationals, as it would have been particularly difficult to examine all of the multinational relationships.