The strategic relevance of Purchasing and Supply Management (PSM) has increasingly been promoted during the last decade as researchers and practitioners have identified several ways how, PSM can generate competitive advantages for the company. From this perspective, the optimal selection of strategic suppliers has also become important because this group of suppliers play a pivotal role in implementing company strategies and generating competitive advantages. The article analyzes in detail, the influence of a broad range of selection criteria for strategic suppliers on PSM and company performance, based on Partial Least Squares (PLS) analysis.