Swedish Furniture Industry

The Influence of Internal and External
factors on the Supplier Selection
A study in the Swedish Furniture Industry

Master Thesis in Business Administration
Authors:

Nikolaos Chatzidakis
Adilson Leite Cancino

Tutor:

Henrik Agndal

Jönköping

May, 2012

Acknowledgements
We are sincerely and heartily thankful to our supervisor, Henrik Agndal, whose support,
encouragement andguidance from the preliminary to the concluding level made this thesis
possible.
We would like to thank all the respondents for taking the time to help us gather data, so
that we could obtain tenable results. We are also truly indebted and thankful to Hamid
Jafari for his advices. Additionally, we are obliged to many of our colleagues who suppor ted us with their honest criticism and advicesduring the development of this thesis.

Nikolaos Chatzidakis

Adilson Leite Cancino

I owe sincere and earnest thankfulness to my thesis partner Adilson for his endeavor
through sufficient collaboration in order to complete this work.
My heartily appreciation goes to Kostas Leontaridis who supported me through all turbulent times. I owe my deepest gratitude to Theodoros Skevas and AggelosTheodosiadis for
their help and guidance. Additionally, I am truly indebted and thankful to Stavros Zafeiridis
for his support during this study period.
Lastly, and most importantly, I wish to express my love and gratitude to my beloved family - Kostas Chatzidakis, Kyranna Grammenou and Eleni Hatzidaki - for their constant patience, encouragement and support.

Nikolaos Chatzidakis 2012-05-13Master Thesis in Business Administration
Title:

The influence of internal and external factors on the supplier selection.
A study in the Swedish Furniture Industry

Authors:

Nikolaos Chatzidakis
Adilson Leite Cancino

Tutor:

Henrik Agndal

Date:

2012-05-13

Subject terms:

Internal and External factors, Supplier Selection Criteria and Decisions,
Swedish FurnitureIndustry, Procurement

Abstract
Sweden has a global reputation of producing exquisite and functional furniture, and
the Swedish industrial design is internationally well-known. The supply of materials is
necessary in every company and purchasing is responsible for coordinating and organising the supply. The materials purchased from vendors become one of the most
strategic parts of the finalproduct quality in order to reduce complaints and add itional costs generated by low quality of materials. Supplier selection plays a vital role
in any company as it represents a significant production of the unity prices as well as
enhances organisational price competitiveness. It is essential for companies in the
furniture industry and from other industries to take into consideration the internaland external organisational factors that reflect on the supplier selection process to
remain competitive and to gain competitiveness before choosing potential vendors.
The purpose of this thesis is to analyse how the internal and external organisational
factors are reflected in the supplier selection criteria in the Swedish Furniture Industry. The combination of the two theories in the frameof reference, namely supplier
selection process as well as internal and external organisational factors were utilised
in order to accomplish this purpose.
This paper is based on the use of a multiple-case study, including six organisations or
cases. The type of interview relevant for this research is the “unstructured inte rviews” as they are informal and are used to explore in depth a generalarea in which
the researchers are interested, also referred as “in-depth interviews”.
One of the main outcomes found after analysing the theoretical framework and the
gathered data is that quality and delivery time are heading these companies’ ranking
lists affecting directly their supplier selection. Another outcome verified by the researchers of this paper is the fact that the case study...