Enhancing the business-to-business supply chain: Insights from partitioning the supply-side

A market orientation has long been established as the key to success in supply chain management. A central concept of this orientation is market segmentation. The concept of market segmentation, however, has primarily been focused on the demand side of the supply chain; its potential application on the supply side has not thoroughly been addressed. This paper extends the purview of the concept behind segmentation by presenting the concept of “supply-side partitioning” to refer to the management of heterogeneities on the supplier side of the supply chain. Further, the concept of “transvectional alignment” is proposed for the purpose of simultaneously aligning market segments with appropriate suppliers at all levels of the supply chain by identifying, evaluating, and selecting supply groups that satisfy the demand function(s) of each segment. This paper discusses supply-side partitioning, includes a model for the supply chain utilizing transvectional alignment, and offers implications for the application of supply-side partitioning in the business-to-business marketspace.