Management Sophistication and Service Performance Available to Purchase

The degree of association between sophistication in distribution management and service performance differs across industries. While there are significant associations with some of the indicators of management sophistication in all three industries used in this study,there was no consistency in the results. The only industry for which there was statistical support for a positive association between management sophistication and service performance is foodstuffs. Even this only indicates poor service providers were less sophisticated management. For all three industry groups there is evidence that factors, other than the level of management sophistication, have influenced the service rankings. The differences in the relevant importance of customer service and the various elements of distribution service may be one such factor. The inconclusiveness of association results may have been contributed to by the failure to take into account inter‐relationships between various subsets of management variables.