Power source and its effect on customer-supplier relationships: An empirical study in Yangtze River Delta

Power has been considered as an important factor in customer-supplier relationship management and supply chain integration. Many previous researches borrowed the definition of power from marketing, economics or sociology. Quite few researchers studied it from the perspective of operations management. However, power effect can be observed from pricing control, inventory control and Just-In-Time (JIT), operations control, channel structure control, and information control. This study tries to fill in the gap based on the empirical study in Yangtze River Delta. It is found that there is a close relationship between the firm's resources and power in operations management. Also, firm's power is also critical in determining its power position with respect to its supplier or customer.