Collaborative buyer–supplier relationships and downstream information in marketing channels

Research on buyer–supplier relationships has emphasized the importance of collaboration and business networks. We aim to study the effects of downstream information on the collaborative buyer–supplier relationship. Downstream information refers to the information a firm obtains from marketing channels, be they wholesalers, distributors or retailers. The approach allows firms to concentrate their efforts on the most relevant sources of information and not on the whole network. Survey data was gathered from the Dutch potted plant and flower industry to test this hypothesis. Our findings demonstrate that collaborative relationships are contingent on downstream information from both the buying perspective (wholesalers) and from the supplying perspective (producers).