Why, did I lose? Debriefing quality and its effects on justice, protests, and sales loss attributions

When suppliers lose in a competitive tender process, they need feedback to make accurate sales loss attributions and adjustments their strategy. Unfortunately, buyers seldomly provide sufficient enable diagnostics, learning, adaptation. The purpose of this research is explore buyer's debriefing as an effective mechanism. Based on data from sample 218 U.S. government source selections, new construct, quality, developed multi-dimensional construct comprised of: proposal efficacy information, procedural compliance decision understanding intelligence information. Results show that quality enhances justice internal external reduces supplier opportunism perceptions buyer opportunism. Further, the underlying selection deters bid protests, can impact justice. Importantly, essential assignment strategy, thus affecting strategy change. These findings expand attribution theory by identifying particular business-to-business context, namely suspicion study closes with specific information mitigate protests help learn enabling future improvements.