Retail buyer control systems: Implications of buyer behavior strategies for performance

•We develop and investigate a theoretical model of retail buyer control systems.•Outcome-based control promotes buyers' price negotiation orientation.•Behavior-based control encourages buyers' innovative behavior orientation.•Both behavior strategies increase retail performance.•Control system designs depend on the specific management objectives.

This study investigates management control systems in retailing and examines how they connect to retail buyers' behavior strategies and retail performance. We test hypotheses with a structure equation modeling (SEM) based on survey data from 149 merchandising division heads at Japanese supermarkets. The results reveal that outcome-based control promotes buyers' price negotiation orientation while behavior-based control encourages buyers' innovative behavior orientation. Moreover, both of these distinct behavior strategies yield greater retail performance. This study contributes toward the development of a generalized model of how retailers can manipulate buyers' behavior strategies from the management perspective by applying organizational control theory in the field of retail buying.

Chinese Abstract这项研究调查了零售业中使用的管理控制系统，并分析了这些系统与零售采购员行为策略和零售业绩之间存在着怎样的关系。我们基于来自149位日本超市的销售部门主管的调查数据并使用了一个结构方程模型（SEM）来对假设进行了论证。结果表明，基于结果的控制方法促使采购员的行为以价格谈判为主导；而基于行为的控制方法则鼓励采购员的行为以创新为主导。此外，这两种截然不同的行为策略都能产生更好的零售业绩。这项研究有助于开发出一个通用的模型来解决零售商如何才能通过应用零售采购业领域中的组织控制理论来从管理角度操控采购员的行为策略。