The Effects of Major Customer Networks on Supplier Profitability
研究了美国上市公司主要客户网络的三个维度（客户集中度、相互依赖和客户互联）如何影响供应商的资产回报率和销售回报率，发现客户集中度和互联性有负面影响，而相互依赖则能提升盈利能力并缓解集中度的负面效应。
Whereas extant research on supply chain networks focuses mainly on the networks of major suppliers , this study fills a gap in the literature by exploring the relational and structural characteristics of networks of major customers and their impact on the financial performance of suppliers. Based on the major customer disclosure of the Statements of Financial Accounting Standards 131, this study identifies three dimensions of the major customer networks of U.S. public firms—customer concentration, mutual dependence and customer interconnection—and investigates how they affect the supplier's return on assets (ROA t +1 ) and return on sales (ROS t +1 ). Drawing on 717 suppliers and their major customer networks from the Compustat database, the study shows that customer concentration and interconnection negatively affect the supplier's ROA t +1 and ROS t +1 , whereas mutual dependence enhances them and reduces the negative impact of customer concentration on the supplier's profitability. This positive interaction between customer concentration and mutual dependence demonstrates how two governance principles, power and embeddedness , simultaneously affect concentrated relationships with major customers.