Purpose – Buyer‐focused operations aim at a high level of supply chain alignment by singling out resources for one buyer in order to serve this buyer optimally. The purpose of this paper is to identify what business characteristics make suppliers choose buyer‐focused operations as a supply...

Purpose – The concept of buyer focus has recently been introduced as a new supply chain strategy, although the design and operation of buyer‐focused cells have hardly been investigated. The purpose of this paper is to investigate how buyer‐focused cells realise responsiveness....