The Inner Mechanism Of Supply Chain Management, Competitive Advantage And Performance In Automotive Industry

The automotive industry is an important pillar of the national economy, an important industry of stimulating domestic demand, promoting GDP growth. Nowadays, along with the global economy development and market competition intensifies, competition among automotive enterprises is increasingly fierce and more is behaved for competition between supply chain. In this competitive environment, that the various auto companies gained competitive advantage through supply chain management is mainly manifested in two aspects. Firstly, to increase the level of service, but also will minimize operating costs; secondly, to speed up the degree of market response providing more choices to customers, enabling customers to enhance the value. For example, Wal-Mart, IBM, Dell and other famous enterprises to achieve better results in terms of supply chain management. Thus, supply chain management occupies an important position in automotive enterprises and an important way for automotive enterprises to gain competitive advantage and improve performance. It is in this environment, the thesis uses structural equation model to study the interaction mechanism between supply chain management, competitive advantage and performance from the angle of quantitative.First, the thesis analyzes the literature of the measurement of supply chain management, competitive advantage. Combining the industry background, supply chain management measurement dimensions is divided into:strategic supplier relationship management, partner relationship management, information sharing and supply chain integration, and the competitive advantage of measuring dimension is divided into:price/cost, quality and market response time. Then, the thesis puts forward the research hypothesis of supply chain management, competitive advantage and performance.Then, a set of questionnaire is designed and extended to some automotive enterprises. We recover316copies of questionnaires, and conduct a series of analysis. First of all, the thesis makes a descriptive analysis. Then, these data validity and reliability analysis are conducted. Combining with the results of the analysis, the questionnaire is revised. Finally, the thesis analyzes the questionnaire data by structural equation modeling. According to the fit of model, the initial model is modified several times to the final model. Then, the hypotheses of the final model are tested. The research results show that supply chain management has a significant positive effect on the competitive advantage, and have a positive effect on the performance, competitive advantage plays an intermediary role in the process of interaction of supply chain management and performance.The end of this thesis is a summary and outlook of this study. Besides, the innovations are also pointed out.