94 Int. J. Business Performance and Supply Chain Modelling, Vol. 6, No. 1, 2014 Copyright © 2014 Inderscience Enterprises Ltd. Using supplier selection sub-criteria: selected illustrative demographic analyses Festus Olorunniwo* and Joel Jolayemi Department of Business Administration, College of Business, Tennessee State University, 330 10th Ave. N, Nashville, TN 37203, USA E-mail: folorunniwo@tnstate.edu E-mail: jjolayemi@tnstate.edu *Corresponding author Abstract: This study examines, through selected illustrative demographic analyses and by focusing on the sub-criteria for quality, delivery, price and service, if there are differences in the levels of importance that companies attribute to supplier selection sub-criteria. It further explores if the relative importance of pertinent selection sub-criterion will be inadvertently missed or overemphasised had the sub-criterion been excluded or is aggregated with other sub-criteria for different type and size of the vendor firm. Our analyses show that manufacturing companies consider only ‘cost reduction plans’ and almost all of the ‘quality’ sub-criteria significantly more important than the non-manufacturing firms. While ‘lead time’ is more important for non-manufacturing firms, there are no differences in the consideration on the ‘service’ sub-criteria. There are significant differences in six sub-criteria (3 in quality, 1 in cost, 1 in delivery, and 1 in service) between large and small firms. Managerial implications of the findings are outlined. Keywords: supply chain management; supplier selection criteria; supplier relationship management; SRM; ANOVA. Reference to this paper should be made as follows: Olorunniwo, F. and Jolayemi, J. (2014) ‘Using supplier selection sub-criteria: selected illustrative demographic analyses’, Int. J. Business Performance and Supply Chain Modelling, Vol. 6, No. 1, pp.94–108. Biographical notes: Festus Olorunniwo is a Professor of Operations and Supply Chain Management and the Head of Department of Business Administration at Tennessee State University, USA. He received his Doctorate degree in Operations Research (Management Science) from the University of Texas at Austin, and MS in Industrial Engineering from Polytechnic Institute of New York University. His research and consulting interests are in supply chain management (supplier relationship management and reverse logistics), service and manufacturing operations (including use of applications of optimisation techniques in their design and operation), and management of quality. He has consulted for several companies in Tennessee, Singapore, Malawi, Ukraine, and Nigeria. Twice a Consultant to United Nations Development Programme, he has also published over 90 research articles in refereed journals and conference proceedings.