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 Buy‑  side  threats

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Power of suppliers

This can be considered as an opportunity rather than a threat. Companies can insist, for 

reasons of reducing cost and increasing supply chain efficiency, that their suppliers use elec-

tronic links such as EDI or Internet EDI to process orders. Additionally, the Internet tends to 

reduce the power of suppliers since barriers to migrating to a different supplier are reduced, 

particularly with the advent of business-to-business exchanges. However, if suppliers insist on 

proprietary technology to link companies, then this creates ‘soft lock-in’ due to the cost or 

complexity of changing suppliers.