NEGOCIATION AS BUSINESS TOOL FOR OBTAINING COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE IN SOURCING

Abstract

The main aim of this paper is to explore negotiation as a business tool that can be used by sourcing companies for obtaining competitive advantage over their rivals in global markets. More and more companies using their own or 3 rd party sourcing companies to buy products with the great value in the term of price and specification from suppliers from different parts of the world. In the last 3 years global market was heavily impacted by multiple crisis that pressed the sourcing companies to be agile, resilient and to find new ways to maintain or obtain a competitive advantage over their competitors. Therefore, the sourcing company should understand which are the processes and tools that can lead them to the targeted results. Negotiation is a core activity in sourcing companies and could be analysed from multiple perspectives. Therefore, the paper will put negotiation, from theoretical point of view, into the current context together with concepts as strategy, sourcing, and competitive advantage. Moreover, paper will analyse from a practical perspective the negotiation terms, that will be integrated in a tool, and their impact on obtaining a competitive advantage. In the end the paper will summarize the types of competitive that could be obtained by leveraging each of the negotiation terms during a negotiation with the suppliers.

Keywords

• negotiation
• competitive advantage
• strategy
• sourcing
• business tool