The kind of supply outsourcing that has been developed in the automotive industry through the hierarchisation of suppliers has brought about the revision of relationships between buyer-supplier companies, which has caused the disappearence of an important number of the latter companies, or caused their absorption by multinationals or their transformation in suppliers of first tier suppliers, in their turn, to assembler companies. Meanwhile, these first tier suppliers have experienced a radical break with previous practices. The new relationship format and its practices have been designed so far according to the assembler companies' needs and wishes, having fundamentally altered marketing practices between the two parties. Fundamental aspects of a relatively independent marketing strategy, as previously, are unavailable to these companies now, whose strategies are totally submitted to the assemblers' control. Academic models fail to express correctly this picture, offering approaches that suggest that all actors involved are capable of independent decision making and bear mutual interest in the new configuration, up to approaches that recognize that marketing functions in networks should be dealt exclusively by hub companies.