Today's market is growing so active and turbulent that a company's ability of developing and managing its relationship with other companies has become a necessary qualification, and if it is well developed, it may become a source of sustainable competitive advantage. Accordingly, the suppliers have been trying to adjust to the increasing power of retailers, to the expansion of horizontal alliance among retailers, to the strengthening of independent retailers, and to all the other kinds of distribution channels. Nevertheless, these companies still find it difficult to follow and assess these commercial relationships and, consequently, to adapt them to this new reality. Thus, the objective of this study is to propose an analysis matrix to assess the relationship among companies by following the behavior and actions of these companies. From an extensive theoretical revision, it was possible to identify variables influencing commercial relationships such as reliability, compromising, interdependence, cooperation, as well as behavior and actions related to each of these variables. This matrix was developed by presuming that the presence of one or more of these variables should mean the possibility of different standards of arrangements among the companies, from the opportunist to the most active collaborator, by using behavior and actions to determine its occurrence. The matrix consists of four categories that can be used to identify the relationship between two companies within four pre-established levels: traditional behavior, collaborative behavior, collaborative actions, and collaborative relationship. After its theoretical development, the matrix was then tested initially for ten pairs of companies, supermarket chains located in the province of São Paulo state and one of their suppliers. The result obtained shows that by assessing the behavior and actions of the partners, it is possible to determine the kind of relationship existing between the pairs studied helping the companies to determine their approaches aiming to improve this relationship or even to end it when necessary.
Distribution channels; Collaborative relationship evaluated
