Harbert College of Business marketing faculty Christopher Hopkins, Colin Gabler, Dan Padgett, and Emory Serviss received two awards at the recent Society for Marketing Advances Conference for their research on B2B supplier relationships.

Their paper, “Relational and financial perspectives in B2B supplier relationships,” garnered the best paper award in the Marketing Strategy and Entrepreneurship track and the Steven Shaw-Joe Hair Best Paper in Conference award. Their research paper was among more than 260 papers submitted to the conference.

In their study, they developed multiple moderated mediation models that underscores the importance of supplier brand recognition on B2B relationships. The managerial implications of this research demonstrated that the stronger brand recognition a supplier has, the greater margin for error in the relationship. In other words, a business that buys from a highly regarded supplier will do well even if the supplier’s products are not delivered on time or are of the highest quality.

“This work encompasses efforts to uncover two distinct paths that purchasers take with their suppliers, one path being relationship-based whereas the other derives from more tangible, financial/economically-oriented concerns,” said Hopkins, the Jean Howard Lowe Professor of Marketing. “Each path is hypothesized to have differing effects on financial, as opposed to strategic decision making.”

This manuscript is the third in a stream of work these authors have been engaged in, the first manuscript was published in the Journal of Business Research (an elite marketing publication), in 2020. A second manuscript is under advanced review at the European Journal of Marketing, also a prestigious outlet in the marketing discipline.

According to Hopkins, the third award-winning manuscript will be targeted for the International Journal of Physical Distribution and Logistics Management, an elite level publication in the Supply Chain Management area.  Glenn Richey, Harbert Eminent Scholar and Professor of Supply Chain Management, will be joining the team as an author on this work.

This paper marks Hopkins’ 16^th Best Paper in Track award and 5^th Best Paper in Conference award. He was named a Society for Marketing Advances Distinguished Fellow in 2019.

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The Harbert College of Business which is celebrating the 10th anniversary of Raymond and Kathryn Harbert's transformational naming gift, is a nationally ranked hub of undergraduate, graduate and continuing business education that is inspiring the next generation of business leaders. Our world-class faculty deliver unparalleled academic rigor in the classroom, while our research-driven scholarship advances thought leadership and best practice across business disciplines. The largest college on Auburn's campus, Harbert enrolls more than 6,900 undergraduate, graduate and doctoral students.