The prevalence of intermediaries (middlemen) in supply chains is often seen as a dying remnant of less efficient times. Despite predictions that supply chains will rapidly “cut out the middleman” as technological advances have eased logistics, middlemen have continued to thrive. In this...

While a broad branch of literature deals with the development of buyer-supplier relationships, limited research exists under which circumstances a buyer should terminate such a relationship and switch to a new supplier. Recently, Wagner and Friedl (2007) have developed a framework to analyze a...