Active Monitoring of the Supply Market Scale

What it measures

Measures the extent to which a buying firm actively monitors alternative suppliers' products and prices, employs competitive bidding, and maintains multiple supply sources. Higher scores indicate a more adversarial, market-based purchasing orientation rather than a collaborative single-source approach.

Response format

Likert

Scale items

• We usually get more than one bid when we purchase this product.
• This supplier is our sole source for this product. (R)
• We do not even consider other suppliers for purchases of this product. (R)
• We try to use multiple sources for this particular supply.
• We often check the price and quality of other vendors of this product.

Full scale items shown. Always cite the original source when using this scale in research.

Usage notes & scoring

CR = .86, AVE = .54. 5-point strongly agree–strongly disagree scale. Two items are reverse-scored (sole sourcing and single-supplier items). Validated on combined US and German manufacturing sample (n=478). Counter-intuitively, active market monitoring was associated with higher (not lower) direct product costs, suggesting sole-sourcing arrangements yield better prices.

Recommended companion scales

Citation

Cannon, J.P. & Homburg, C. (2001). Buyer–supplier relationships and customer firm costs. Journal of Marketing, 65(1), 29–43.

Keywords