The Effects of Manufacturing Firm's Supply Chain Performance on Competitive Advantage

This study, based on a survey of 1000 manufacturing firms in central south, south and central China regions, examines the relationship among supply chain performance, competitive advantage and firm performance. By exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses, the scale of manufacturing firm's supply chain performance is obtained. The results show that supply chain performance can be conceptualized as a four dimensional construct: supplier performance, customer responsiveness, supply chain flexibility and supply chain cost. Furthermore, after testing research hypotheses by LISREL, we find that these four constructs all have significant effects on competitive advantage, and that each of them except supplier performance has significant effects on firm performance. The implications for our findings are also presented for the improvement of manufacturing firm's supply chain performance.