Supply Chain Management Practices and Performance of Food and Beverages Manufacturing Firms in South-East Nigeria

Abstract

The study investigated supply chain management practices and performance of food and beverages manufacturing firms in South East Nigeria. It aimed to assess the influence of strategic supplier partnership, customer relationship, sorting strategy on performance of food and beverages manufacturing firms. The researcher employed explanatory research design with a cross-sectional approach design and a targeted population of 250 staff comprising all the marketing staff from 10 different food and beverage (F&B) manufacturing firms in the South East, Nigeria as the area of study where 2 firms from each state were selected that include Abia, Anambra, Ebonyi, Enugu and Imo state. Descriptive analysis employed includes; means, percentages, and standard deviations in describing how strategic supplier partnerships influenced operational performance. The study used structured questionnaire where four point Likert scale was provided for the respondents to score as follows: strongly agree = 4, agree = 3, disagree = 2, strongly disagree = 1. Correlation analysis and regression analysis was employed to establish the relationship between strategic supplier partnerships and operational performance of food and beverage manufacturing firms. The findings revealed that supplier partnership had a strong negative and significant correlation with evident in the correlation coefficient of (r = -0.690, p = 0.000), the same way customer relationship had a strong negative and significant correlation with evident in the correlation coefficient of(r = 0.655, and p = 0.000 < 0.05), finally Sorting strategy  had a strong negative and significant correlation with evident in the correlation coefficient of (r = -0.534, p = 0.000 < 0.05) in the  performance of food and beverages manufacturing  firms in South East, Nigeria. Practical implications and a future research agenda were presented in light of the limitations of this study.