Information technology investments in purchasing: an empirical investigation of communications, relationship and performance outcomes

The present study draws on the information technology (IT), marketing, purchasing, and organization literatures to develop an integrated model of the antecedents and outcomes of IT investments in the context of organizational purchasing. We examine the role that IT investments play in enacting collaborative communications strategies, fostering improvements in interfirm relationships, and enhancing purchasing performance. Together, these factors comprise elements of our conceptual model that depicts the motivations for investing in IT and the underlying process by which IT influences purchasing performance. Our model draws on and extends the marketing communications literature to integrate two complementary views of how IT may influence performance. The first reflects the prevailing perspective from the IT literature, which views this technology as the locomotive that drives performance and productivity. The second, emerging view suggests that this technology can also be used to foster improved interfirm relationships. We present the results of an empirical analysis that tested our conceptual framework and found that IT indirectly effects performance, i.e., its effect is fully mediated by relationship quality. (C) 2003 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.