What has not been addressed, however, is the extent to which customer focus drives
supply-chain relational capabilities and performance. To the extent that customer
focus has been addressed, researchers have typically conceptualized it as an “outcome”
variable (e.g. Das and Narasimhan, 2000; Hines, 1996). One exception is Sousa (2003),
who investigated a wide range of “customer focus practices” in supply-chain
management context. Although documenting customer focus practices in supply chain
is important, we argue that discrete practices, per se can be easily duplicated, and,
therefore, may not confer durable competitive advantages for supply-chain partners
(e.g. Barney, 1991; Lado andWilson, 1994). Additionally, without a coherent theoretical
framework, it is difficult to distinguish between the set of customer-focus practices that
are truly value-enhancing and those that are not.