Factors Influencing the Effects of Customer Integration under Conditions of Market Turbulence

Research has demonstrated the financial and operational benefits of collaborative practices that encourage integration of customers and suppliers. However, fit is important to identify the mechanisms that enable this relationship to persist in the presence of major market turbulence. In this paper, we build on existing work in the operations management (in particular third party logistics) literature related to the performance effects of customer integration by using insights from the marketing, strategic management and organizational learning literature to present a model of how organizational performance effects of market turbulence are likely to be mediated by learning processes, customer orientation and employee absorptive capacities, thereby maintaining the performance effects of customer integration in the presence of market turbulence.