Companies that are able to manage efficient relationships with their suppliers have a greater guarantee of success and profitability in their activity. Their products will achieve the desired standards of quality. The amount of time and economic resources that firms need to build relationships is substantial and hence involves greater risk and uncertainty. Furthermore, smaller firms have fewer resources than larger ones and, therefore, the management of supply relationships can be more complicated. Therefore, this paper, by analysing a specific case, tries to identify those factors that a small to medium‐sized enterprise (SME) assesses when choosing and deciding on building a supply relationship with a specific supplier.
Through a real and practical case, considering the customer's point‐of‐view, this paper aims to offer a new model. It links to one group of some previously tested variables that illustrates the temporary evolution of supply relationships with present observations where both temporal extremes, the moment in which the relationship is in a latent state and its termination, are considered.
Finds that prior to terminating a relationship the company carries out a re‐evaluation of the supplier. The decision whether to continue the relationship after renegotiating some of its aspects, or terminate it altogether, will be made after analysing the results of that new evaluation. But firms are more demanding in this than in the initial assessment.
Limitations could arise because we consider only one case study, although a set of relationships are analysed.
No previous researches analysing the dynamics of supply relationships have compared both initial assessment to possible reassessment processes.
