The purpose of this research has been to explore the role of agent certification in the process of global sourcing. While some research has been done in the area of exporter-intermediary relationship, little has been done to study the importance of buyer-agent relationship and how the process of agent certification could strengthen that relationship. Global sourcing has played a vital role in the existence of textile and apparel industries across the world. With the increased advancement of developing countries and the numerous advantages that these countries possess, developed countries, such as the United States and countries in the European sub-continent, rely heavily on global sourcing to remain competitive in the global marketplace. Due to numerous barriers to global sourcing such as language barriers and inability to check sources, companies have found it useful to source through agents. These agents act as the facilitators between the sources and the buyers. With the advent of Internet and e-commerce, online sourcing has come into picture. Although the transparency in terms of sources and buyers on the web and their processes has increased and organizations are thinking of certifying sources, the role of agents' sill exists. A total of 30 agents and apparel-manufacturing buyers were interviewed to assess the feasibility and role of agent certification in the global sourcing process. While the specific items to be certified were not confirmed, both types of subjects agreed that agent certification would assist in the transactions in the buyer-agent relationship. It was found that small and medium-sized buyers would find agent certification more useful than large-sized buyers because of small-size buyers' limited resources and potential to find trusted agents.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:NCSU/oai:NCSU:etd-07092002-144057 |
| Date | 24 July 2002 |
| Creators | Garg, Ashwajeet |
| Contributors | Dr. Michelle Jones, Dr. Peter Kilduff, Dr. George Rouskas |
| Publisher | NCSU |
| Source Sets | North Carolina State University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Source | http://www.lib.ncsu.edu/theses/available/etd-07092002-144057/ |
| Rights | unrestricted, I hereby certify that, if appropriate, I have obtained and attached hereto a written permission statement from the owner(s) of each third party copyrighted matter to be included in my thesis, dissertation, or project report, allowing distribution as specified below. I certify that the version I submitted is the same as that approved by my advisory committee. I hereby grant to NC State University or its agents the non-exclusive license to archive and make accessible, under the conditions specified below, my thesis, dissertation, or project report in whole or in part in all forms of media, now or hereafter known. I retain all other ownership rights to the copyright of the thesis, dissertation or project report. I also retain the right to use in future works (such as articles or books) all or part of this thesis, dissertation, or project report. |
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