An empirical study of EDI trading partner selection criteria in customer-supplier relationships

Electronic data interchange (EDI)-enabled trading partnerships are even more important now that EDI and electronic commerce-based technologies are underlying long-term strategic business partnerships. This study investigates the trading partner selection criteria used by ®rms in a customer-supplier dyad and their relative importance according to EDI implementation level is also established. Using the survey method implementing paired questionnaires for a dyad of customersupplier ®rms, the study gathered data from 152 respondent ®rms. Factor analysis yielded six factors in trading partner selection: strategic commitment, trading partner ̄exibility, joint partnering for EDI, readiness for high-level EDI, EDI infrastructure, and communications. MANOVA and t-tests were used to test differences in the means of the responses of customer and supplier ®rms to the selection criteria. Overall, customer ®rms assigned higher means to all six factors than did the supplier ®rms. The gap between the two groups of ®rms were widest for the factors readiness for high-level EDI, trading partner ̄exibility, and communications. # 2000 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.