The interrelationship between purchasing maturity, internal customer satisfaction and purchasing performance : an empirical study

So far, academic literature has paid extensive attention to the importance of purchasing development within the context of the current business environment, emphasizing value creation and delivery and integrated supply chain management. In addition, the contribution of purchasing’s (internal service) performance to an organization’s success has been widely claimed. Despite the current focus on purchasing maturity, internal service performance and purchasing performance, only scarce attention has been given to their interrelationships. By means of an extensive literature study, a framework that outlines how purchasing maturity leads to purchasing performance is unfolded and tested. In particular, we state that internal customer satisfaction plays a mediating role between purchasing maturity and purchasing savings realized. Thereby, the moderating role of purchasing category and internal customer differentiation on the effects of purchasing maturity is depicted as well. Currently, hypotheses are tested at the purchasing project level by means of an empirical study on a large purchasing database of a case company. The present study uncovers a large and unexplored intra-organizational research field within the scope of purchasing development and performance