Attributes increasing Customer Attractiveness for getting awarded Preferred Customer Status

The issue of this thesis is the fact that an increasing number of companies face the problem that they do not get sufficiently access to the raw material they need. This contribution addresses this problem and focuses on drivers of customer attractiveness. These attractiveness drivers enable buying firms to get awarded preferred customer status in order to gain a privileged access to suppliers resources and thus strategic competitive advantages on raw material markets. To identify those drivers a detailed literature has been conducted and based on these findings a quantitative empirical study in the timber processing industry in Austria is set up aiming at the identification of the most relevant attractiveness drivers. The results obtained help purchasing representatives to increase the buying firms attractiveness for getting supplied in a more satisfying way. Further, this study contributes to the existing literature by identifying circumstances under which attractiveness drivers may or may not work.