Beyond Price: How Swedish Steel and Foundry SMEs Perceive Value, Risk and Relationship Quality When Selecting Suppliers

Sammanfattning

Abstract Background- Swedish steel and foundry SMEs operate at the intersection of a far-reaching sustainability transition, tightening regulation (e.g. BAT 2028), volatile geopolitics, and a steadily consolidating supplier base. Yet, B2B relationship marketing, value-based selling (VBS), and organizational buying behavior (OBB) research has almost exclusively foregrounded supplier-side practices and large buying organizations. How smaller industrial buyers actually perceive and prioritize value and risk when selecting suppliers therefore remains insufficiently understood. Purpose- This study explores how Swedish SMEs in the steel and foundry industry perceive and prioritize value and risk when selecting and evaluating their suppliers. It develops a theory-informed conceptual framework that integrates VBS, the commitment-trust perspective, and perceived-risk literature from a buyer-focused SME viewpoint, and contributes both to academic debates on industrial buying and to practical supplier-side strategy.Method - A qualitative, exploratory, theory-informed inductive design was employed. Eight semi-structured interviews were conducted with owners, managers, and purchasing decision-makers across eight Swedish steel and foundry SMEs (ranging from 1-249 employees and spanning iron foundries, model tooling, marine molds, steel powder, foundry trading, and metal processing). Data were analyzed using Braun and Clarke’s (2006) thematic analysis nested within Gioia et al.’s (2013) inductive coding logic, yielding four aggregate dimensions, sixteen second-order themes and one hundred thirty-eight first-order codes. Conclusion- Swedish steel and foundry SMEs perceive value primarily as operational continuity and relational trust: delivery security and process-fit quality are non-negotiables, technical service and responsiveness create relational glue, and price functions only as a tiebreaker between functionally equivalent suppliers. Sustainability is welcomed as a co-benefit but rejected as a stand-alone premium, a stance labelled “pragmatic sustainability”. Risk is perceived asymmetrically and multilayered, with geopolitical and regulatory pressures emerging as first-order decision parameters rather than background variables. Trust and commitment are built through two distinct mechanisms (everyday responsiveness and accumulated tenure), are operationally thickened by routines such as consignment inventory and framework agreements, and are deeply embedded in informal SME networks. The study consolidates these findings in a revised conceptual framework that visualizes the supplier selection outcome and its interplay.