The empirical analysis in this study is focused on three customer companies and 36 supplier companies in the electronics industry in Britain and Japan. Before zooming in on these specific cases, this chapter provides an aerial view of buyer—supplier relationships in the two countries. The first section provides some definitions to enable explicit international comparisons, and discusses some country-specific notions concerning buyer—supplier relationships. The second section surveys official and other statistics on buyer—supplier and sub-contracting structures, noting differences between sectors as well as between Britain and Japan. Against this broad background, the last section describes the nature of the companies chosen for detailed investigation.

Definitions and metaphors

As the purpose of this study is to make explicit comparisons between Britain and Japan, it would be wise to (a) provide universal definitions and (b) clarify country-specific peculiarities. This should help to avoid any misunderstandings over terminology, and to confront the potential problem in international comparisons that one may be comparing apples and pears.

Definitions

Inter-firm relations may be classified into relationships between competitors and between a buyer firm and a supplier firm. In the latter case, a buyer—supplier relation is established whenever there is an exchange of goods or services which are produced by one party and which are of value to the other.