TITLE:
Manufacturer and Distributor’s Performance Measurement: A Case Study of Small-Scale Manufacturing Company in Lagos Nigeria
AUTHORS:
Samuel Dayo Odusina
KEYWORDS:
Manufacturer and Distributors Relationship, Service Request Quality, Customer Services Agreement
JOURNAL NAME:
Open Journal of Business and Management,
Vol.10 No.3,
May
9,
2022
ABSTRACT: Manufacturers’ satisfaction with their product distributors’ channel
performances and vice-versa is dominantly dependent on the relationship, and
only satisfied partners invest more resources into the relationship, thereby
resulting in sustainable advantages to both parties. Factors such as lack of
trust, lack of communication, and the nature and number of conflicts are known
to influence satisfaction. Strong positive relationships are characterized by
trust, commitment, and excellent service quality. Winning and preserving the
allegiance of distributors recently have become a more challenging task for manufacturers most especially the
small-scale manufacturing companies. Numerous researchers advocated for
manufacturers-distributor partnerships and alliances. They advocated for
replacing short-term oriented exchanges with relational exchanges such as
partnerships, strategic alliances and just-in-time relationships through
planning and information sharing. Such strong commitment can only be possible
after each party has become satisfied with each other’s service request quality
performance. There are factors that influence performance and determine levels
of service quality that can be provided by a product distributor to a
manufacturer and that of a manufacturer to a distributor. This paper examines
the factors that influence manufacturers’ assessment of the distributor and
factors that influence distributors’ assessment of the Manufacturer. These
factors were subjected to a ranking by targeted population group of manufacturers,
product distributors and retailers and their responses were statistically
analysed using SPSS. The research outcome shows that manufacturers ranked
distributors that sell products at a reasonable sales price and make high sales
volume very high, while distributor attention is drawn to manufacturers having
a large customer base, good customer services and reasonable sales price. The
paper makes recommendations and suggestions that can directly help in the
selection of manufacturers or distributors. This research work is however
limited to small scale manufacturer and their product distributors operating in
an open market scenario in Lagos Nigeria.