Supply management practices and performance in the Canadian hospitality industry

As the competition to gain customers becomes more intense, the hospitality industry has faced increasing pressure to find new approaches to create and deliver value to customers through supply chain management (SCM) practices. Over the past decade there has been a growing realization of the important contribution that purchasing and supply management can have on an organization's performance. This paper addresses SCM practices, with an emphasis on strategic purchasing (SP), in one sector of the Canadian hospitality industry. Using data collected from 105 Canadian hotels, this study tested seven hypotheses of the impact of SP on SCM practices and verified the impact on the hotel's performance. All of the hypothesized relationships were supported. The results indicate that SP is positively related to the relationship with the supplier (SR), communication (COM), service quality (SQ.), financial performance (FINP), and customer satisfaction performance (CUSP). The managerial and research implications of these findings are discussed in the paper. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.