Several limitations of this study should be considered when interpreting the findings of
hypothesized relationships. These limitations also provide opportunities for future
research. First, as with similar studies (e.g. Hult et al., 2007), the cross-sectional nature
of the data used in this study limits our ability to make causal inferences. In the
future, researchers would need to conduct longitudinal investigations in order to more
precisely assess the extent to which customer focus positively impacts the mobilization
of relational competencies within supply chain contexts. Second, our reliance on key
informants as sources of data for all of the variables under investigation makes it
difficult to rule out any bias due to common method variance. Although we attempted
to minimize this concern in this study, we suggest that in the future, researchers
would need to use multiple respondents as key informants, and collect data for the
independent and dependent variables from different sources. Also, we took the “buyer”
side of the dyad, similar to prior research in supply-chain management (e.g. Paulraj
et al., 2008) and strategic management (e.g. Kale et al., 2000), to tap responses to the
survey items. In the future, researchers should tap both sides of the buyer-supplier
dyads in order to fully assess the degree of convergence with respect to the variables
under investigation.