Becoming a more attractive supplier by managing references – The case of small and medium-sized enterprises in a digitally enhanced business environment

Toth, Zsofia; Nieroda, Marzena; Koles, Bernadett

Abstract

Small is beautiful too (Schumacher, 2011): while a large client may well generate considerable turnover, creating a balanced portfolio of customer firms that includes small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) helps to manage risks and to establish a more innovative environment for value creation (De Mattos, Burgess, & Shaw, 2013). To achieve these benefits, suppliers need to better understand how they can make themselves attractive in the eyes of SME customers. Understandably, due to resource limitations, SME customers tend to be more careful about selecting suppliers in comparison to large firms (Narula, 2004). Moving these considerations to an increasingly digitalized business environment characterized by information overload adds further layers of complexity (Bi, Liu, & Usman, 2017). Although effective reference management via corporate online references and Word of Mouth (WOM) recommendations is of great importance, in that they enable firms to communicate key qualities and competencies and to convey attractiveness (Helm & Salminen, 2010), our current understanding is limited as to how attractiveness may be established and attained in the eyes of SME managers (Mortensen, 2012)

Citation

Toth, Z., Nieroda, M., & Koles, B. (2019). Becoming a more attractive supplier by managing references – The case of small and medium-sized enterprises in a digitally enhanced business environment. Industrial Marketing Management, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.indmarman.2019.07.010

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Jul 25, 2019
• Online Publication Date: Aug 30, 2019
• Publication Date: Aug 30, 2019
• Deposit Date: Sep 4, 2019
• Publicly Available Date: Aug 31, 2021
• Journal: Industrial Marketing Management
• Print ISSN: 0019-8501
• Publisher: Elsevier
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.indmarman.2019.07.010
• Keywords: Marketing
• Public URL: https://nottingham-repository.worktribe.com/output/2562595
• Publisher URL: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0019850118307223