Suppliers' Product Market Competition, Customer Concentration, and Cost Structure

We examine how suppliers' product market competition influences the relation between customer concentration and cost structure. Analyzing cost data from a sample of manufacturing firms, we find that suppliers exhibit more rigid cost structure when both product market competition and customer concentration are high. In further analysis, we find that the effect of competition on the relationship between customer concentration and cost structure is isolated to the COGS and COGM. Our results suggest that suppliers trade off the downside risk of having fixed costs that cannot be reassigned with the potential upside benefit of meeting major customer demands.