The three items that measure supplier relationships show the extent to which
the firm maintains comprehensive relationships with the organizations that supply
the goods and services the focal firm uses. Similarly, five items measure customer
relationships in terms of the extent to which the company maintains relationships with
its customers. Product advantages are defined as competitive advantages gained from
product attributes through quality, reliability, and durability. We asked respondents to
rate their firm’s product performance relative to major competitors on the four items
used to measure this construct. The literature portrays SCM practices from a variety of
different perspectives. In this study, SCM practices are defined as long-term evolving
decision-making guidelines focussing on merging a buyer’s requirements directly into
a supplier’s outputs. We focussed on activities between a buyer and a supplier, such
as information sharing, strategic partnership, and integration. We used five items
to measure this dependent variable construct. Finally, we control for the industrial
environment, referring to the amount of change and complexity in the industrial
environment in which the firm conducts business, by asking each respondent’s
perception of the level of uncertainty or dynamism and the hostility of their industry’s
business environment.