Please find below an elaboration of my main research interests. Publications on these topics can be found
here
Supplier involvement in innovation
Since 1994, my main research area is the involvement of suppliers in product development. Product development has become an increasingly important strategy for developing and maintaining a strong position in an ever more competitive business arena. Earlier and more extensive involvement of suppliers in product development is arguably one of the ways to help improve product development performance in terms of costs, speed and product quality and can also provide a source of innovative ideas and critical technologies. Various studies, however, have found that supplier involvement is not always effective and/or efficient. Addressing these apparent gaps and controversies in the existing literature, my specific interest regards the interplay between short-term collaboration projects and long-term supply strategies. In this area, I have been/am collaborating and publishing together with Arjan van Weele, Ferrie van Echtelt, Geert Duysters (TU/e), and Björn Axelsson (SSE).
Procurement of business services
Driven by changes in the economy, marketing and purchasing of business services has been receiving growing attention both in research and practice. This importance of business services is also reflected in the purchase patterns of individual organizations. Developments like the increased use of outsourcing (and off-shoring) IT development, call-center functions, product development and design, and the general trend towards the increased ‘servization’ of goods, have only increased this share of services in total purchase volumes. At the same time, most literature in the area of purchasing and supply management has traditionally focused on the sourcing of goods. However, various studies have demonstrated that organizational buyers view the purchasing of business services as essentially different from purchasing goods. One would expect these observations to have triggered a significant amount of research into sourcing of business services. However, literature in general has had a predominant focus on consumer services as compared to business services. More specifically, very few studies on service sourcing have investigated the ongoing interaction processes between buyers and suppliers; i.e. ‘life after the purchase’. This is all the more surprising since service management and marketing literature has consistently been emphasizing that services are produced in interactive processes between the seller and the buyer. Currently, the main project in this area is the PhD research by
Wendy van der Valk. In this area, we have been/are collaborating and publishing together with Björn Axelsson, Fredrik Nordin, Henrik Agndal (SSE) and Luis Araujo and Martin Spring (Lancaster).
Analysis of cost and value in purchasing decisions
In business markets, offerings from competing suppliers often have different prices and different performance in a customer firm’s application. Further, over time, a given supplier will make changes in the price and changes in the performance of its product offering. Value expresses in monetary terms the total functionality or performance of a product offering in a given customer application. Thus, each product offering can be viewed as having two elemental characteristics: its value to the customer and its price. An intriguing question is: How do purchasing managers combine these two characteristics, and changes in them, to make purchase decisions? These questions are especially relevant as many firms re-examine their purchasing strategies and practices, changing from buying to supply management. In this area, I have been/am collaborating and publishing together with Marc Wouters (UT), James Anderson (Kellogg) and James Narus (Babcock).
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