Antecedents and consequences of customer flexibility: Establishing the link to firm competitive advantage

Vahid Ghomi, David Gligor, Mahour Parast, Sina Shokoohyar and Mina Ghofrani Esfahani

Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, 2021, vol. 62, issue C

Abstract: Flexibility has been recognized as a critical source of competitive advantage for firms operating in uncertain markets. Although various studies have examined the antecedents and consequences of this desirable attribute, limited studies have addressed the interplay between supplier and customer flexibility. This is a significant limitation in the flexibility literature considering the abundance of evidence indicating that supplier flexibility (SF) impacts customer-related phenomena, and customer flexibility (CF) impacts supplier-related phenomena. Considering the research indicating that suppliers' benevolence toward customers enhances CF toward the suppliers, we argue that SF has a positive impact on CF. In other words, we posit that when suppliers show flexibility toward their customers, those customers will reciprocate by showing flexibility toward those suppliers. This logic is grounded in the tenets of reciprocity theory. Moreover, using the resource-based view theory, we link these concepts to firm competitive advantage (FCA). Our findings allow us to derive noteworthy theoretical and practical implications, which we detail in the manuscript.

Keywords: Customer flexibility; Supplier flexibility; Intrinsic attributes; Extrinsic attributes; Firm competitive advantage; Resource-based view theory; Reciprocity theory (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0969698921001752
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:joreco:v:62:y:2021:i:c:s0969698921001752

DOI: 10.1016/j.jretconser.2021.102609

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services is currently edited by Harry Timmermans

More articles in Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().