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ABSTRACT
The relationships between the enterprise and its stakeholders, such as suppliers or buyers, become critical. The reason is that these mutual sustainable, long-lasting relationships lead to the growth of both sides (enterprise and its supplier or buyer). They secure the enterprise's competitiveness and achieve the loyalty and trust of its suppliers and buyers. The paper aims to define the diversification process of suppliers and buyers as one of the steps in managing the enterprise 's relationships with given stakeholders. As part of diversification, the enterprise must first establish a criterion based on which the stakeholders (suppliers and buyers) will be divided. It was possible to identify the criteria based on which enterprises segment their buyers and suppliers through research. The paper focuses on the impact of diversification on the enterprise's relationship with its suppliers and buyers. We assume that if the enterprise uses the diversification of buyers and suppliers, the relationships between the enterprise and selected suppliers and buyers will improve. The paper describes the segmentation of buyers and suppliers in the case of385 enterprises from Slovakia. The enterprises explained whether they use the segmentation process to manage their relationships with suppliers and buyers, defined the segmentation criteria, and their relationships with suppliers and buyers. Statistical method used to analyse the data and evaluate the results is Pearson's chi-square test.
Keywords: Buyers, Diversification, Enterprise, Relationship, Stakeholders, Suppliers
1. INTRODUCTION
Currently, enterprises are looking for ways to gain a competitive advantage and acquire and retain business partners. One of these ways is to create value for selected stakeholders. Through this process, enterprises know how to ensure the loyalty of business partners, their trust, effective communication with each other, long-term and sustainable cooperation, as well as their competitiveness. One of the steps in creating value for suppliers and buyers is the diversification of the given stakeholder groups. Each enterprise can set a criterion for the division of buyers and suppliers. Based on this diversification, they can choose those business partners with whom it wants to cooperate long-term and with whom it wants to build good business relationships.
2. LITERATURE REVIEW
According to Kelly, Male and Graham (2015), value management is a philosophy, direction, and particular management style. The main goal is improving stakeholder decision-making. These...