Ms. Ramokone Maria Mashitja
Abstract
South African clothing retail firms are facing challenges such as higher wages and lower demand, which have a detrimental impact on the economy by slowly decreasing employment opportunities. Therefore, the main purpose of this study is to investigate how the factors of supply chain relationship quality and cooperative strategy impact supply chain quality performance within the clothing retail firms in South Africa. Additionally, the study aims to evaluate the effects of supply chain relationship quality on quality performance within successful supply chains of clothing retail firms. In this study, a quantitative research approach was utilised because it assists in simplifying the data used. This method also extends the thoughts of the researcher about the research area investigated. This study, therefore, used a non-probability sampling technique as this method does not make use of any randomised procedure to draw up samples. A controlled survey questionnaire was developed and administered to 300 randomly selected clothing retail store owners and managers who were knowledgeable about supply chain management. This study concluded that communication, trust, cooperation, commitment, adaptation and interdependence are vital elements in influencing supply chain quality performance in clothing retail firms. However, it is crucial to investigate strategic means to understand how these relationships can be improved.