Antecedents of supplier's commitment to wholesale buyers in the international travel trade

Establishing, developing and maintaining successful buyer-seller relationships constitutes a critical strategic skill in the international travel trade. After conceptualizing the importance of quality distributor-supplier networks that make prepackaged tours possible, this study explores the factors that influence suppliers commitment to the buyer. Commitment is a essential part of successful buyer-supplier relationships and this study provides support for a number of factors influencing supplier commitment to maintaining stable relationships with wholesale buyers. Namely, social bonds, trust, cooperation, communication, comparison level of the alternatives, and performance satisfaction were found to be significantly related to supplier commitment in this study of small activity based tourism suppliers, (C) 1998 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.