Building on the co-opetition perspective, this study takes a unified approach to examine relationship benefits and transaction costs in buyer–supplier relationships. We argue that buyer–supplier vertical dyads fall into one of four distinct co-opetition types based on their respective degrees of cooperation and competition. Each co-opetition situation then corresponds to unique levels of relationship benefits and transaction costs. A sample of 225 supplier–buyer dyads from the Chinese home appliance industry confirms that competition has a positive effect on transaction costs and a negative effect on relationship benefits, while cooperation stimulates greater relationship benefits but affects transaction costs mainly at low competition levels. The results advance prior research on buyer–supplier relationships and co-opetition and offer valuable avenues for future research.

As the co-opetition strategy is frequently adopted by small and medium-sized accounting agencies, the main purpose of this study is to discuss the antecedents and impact of the adoption of the co-opetition strategy from the viewpoint of the resource-based theory. This study distributed questionnaires to CPAs (Certified Public Accountant) of small and medium-sized accounting agencies, and recovered 225 valid questionnaires for analysis. This study applied the confirmatory factor analysis to test the intrinsic quality of the measurement model, the structural equation modeling in testing the research hypotheses, and cluster analysis in distinguishing the co-opetition strategy types. The empirical results suggest that expertise heterogeneity positively affects competition strategy, and expertise complementarity positively affects the cooperation strategy. Finally, this study presents the resource and co-opetition strategy relationship matrix in order to provide small and medium-sized accounting agencies with reference for practical business operations.