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An increasing number of companies are setting up strategic alliances with suppliers and customers. However, the majority of these alliances do not succeed. Our aim is to understand how different behavioural characteristics are associated with alliance success. We hypothesize that alliance attributes, communication behaviour and alliance management are predictors of cost and service benefits. Furthermore, we found that while alliance attributes are related with both cost and service benefits, communication behaviour and alliance management are only associated with service and cost benefits respectively. We also see that alliance attributes explain most of the variance of supply chain success and are thus better predictors of alliance success than other behavioural characteristics. Furthermore, we provide insight into the way managers can build up supply chain performance by setting up strategic alliances