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The Relative Importance Of Physical Versus Service Attributes With Respect To Small Business Vendor Selection, Harold W. Babb, Amy S. Ashworth

Robins School of Business White Paper Series, 1980-2022

Recent literature on the topic of vendor selection has focused on a broad, macro view of the relationship between the selection and buying processes (see e.g., Dempsey, 1978; Holt, 1981). However, most of the studies have not examined such processes in the context of the small business enterprise nor have they discriminated between the importance of physical versus service attributes. A recent study by Manzer, Ireland, and Van Auken (1981) did employ the small business in a "matrix approach" to vendor selection. However, there appears to be a paucity of research involving the relative importance of physical versus service attributes …