Dealing with a Lead User’s Demand for Product Development

This article focuses on product development in interaction. Two types of -product development projects demanded by a lead-user type of customer are discussed, as well as the consequences these projects have for the supplier regarding change in production processes, market risk and relationship dependencies. The discussion is illustrated by two cases. Six propositions are developed and further research suggested.

     

Customer Participation and Project Performance: The Mediating Role of Knowledge Sharing in the Chinese Telecommunication Service Industry

Purpose: Extant literature has devoted more attention to customer value co-creation and knowledge sharing, not only in business-to-customer (B2C) markets, but also in business-to-business (B2B) markets. This study explores and examines the antecedents and consequences of customer knowledge sharing in the context of B2B markets by applying the motivation-opportunity-ability (MOA) framework.

Methodology/Approach: This empirical study involves two structured surveys of project managers from both suppliers (n = 213) and customers (n = 312), which were conducted in the context of the Chinese telecommunication service industry. The conceptual model of this study was subsequently tested by developing Partial Least Squares (PLS) based structural equation models.

Findings: It was found that customer knowledge sharing is facilitated by four MOA factors: customer orientation, customer perceived benefits, customer socialization, and customer technological capability. It was determined that knowledge sharing has a direct and significant effect on project performance. Furthermore, the study revealed that such relationships vary across suppliers and customers.

Research Implications: This study extends the existing research stream of interfirm knowledge sharing by examining the antecedents and consequences of customer knowledge sharing from dual perspectives of customers and suppliers, and sheds light on the benefits of customer knowledge sharing. The dyadic perspective embodied in this design facilitates our understanding and management of knowledge sharing between organizations.

Originality/Value/Contribution: This article provides an important contribution to the existing literature of customer knowledge sharing by revealing how to effectively facilitate interorganizational knowledge sharing, particularly knowledge from customers to suppliers, and discovers conditions under which customers are more likely to exchange information, and share knowledge with their suppliers from the dyadic perspective.     

BOOK REVIEWS

Purpose: Companies engage in business relationships for a variety of reasons, including specialization, product development, and building competitive networks. Research has demonstrated that mergers and acquisitions (M&As) may challenge ongoing business relationships. The purpose of this article is to investigate whether and how competition authorities consider business relationships when evaluating M&As.

Methodology: The article uses the documentation from 450 M&As reported to the Swedish competition authority to capture the way in which an authority evaluates M&As. The Swedish competition authority evaluation corresponds to other national and international evaluation procedures.

Findings: The findings indicate that the competition authorities neglect an important aspect of business life, namely companies forming business relationships. The competition authorities evaluate M&As on the basis of risk for price increases, and consequently disregard such issues as heterogeneity in demand and offerings, and values built into existing business relationships.

Originality/Value/Contribution: The article contributes to research on business relationships through exploring how a public authority deals with such relationships. It also contributes to research on mergers and acquisitions through examining how these activities are evaluated by competition authorities. Furthermore, the article contributes to competition research by reflecting on competition law concerning M&A regulations in relation to business relationships.     

Conceptualization and Integration of Marketing Intelligence: The Case of an Industrial Manufacturer

Purpose: The primary goal of this article was to conceptualize a systematic marketing intelligence process for industrial manufacturers because, up until now, such concepts have only been focused on consumer goods settings. Hence, this article investigates how marketing intelligence activities are developed and managed effectively in industrial markets.

Methodology/approach: The authors conducted a case study of Maschinenfabrik Reinhausen, a German based manufacturer of regulation technology for power transformers.

Findings: We found that a systematic marketing intelligence process should be based on the resource- and market-based view of strategy as well as on the market orientation construct. When implementing marketing intelligence, the integration of the sales force within the whole process is the crucial lever for an industrial company. The formalization of the process is necessary to ensure its continuity and acceptance; however, the varying intensity allows the necessary flexibility of the process.

Research implications: The constraints of the decisive process steps of marketing intelligence have to be further enhanced for industrial markets. It is important to find out how the integration of the sales force can best be designed to incorporate reward systems and motivation structures, and how to establish a corporate marketing-minded culture throughout the organization.

Practical implications: The important steps for a well implemented marketing intelligence process are a preparation phase, followed by the gathering, analysis, and dissemination of information. This article highlights the success factors for each process step. Above all, managerial and organizational commitment is necessary for the implementation of the whole process.

Originality/value/contribution: By focusing on the industrial manufacturing business, this study provides deep insights into a neglected area of research. Light needs to be shed on marketing intelligence in industrial markets, where the lack of traditional market research has to be compensated.     

An Integrative Framework of Buyer–Supplier Negative Relationship Quality and Dysfunctional Interfirm Conflict

ABSTRACT

Purpose: Problems of relationship quality and interfirm conflict in business-to-business settings are serious concerns that need to be addressed. Thus, the authors have engaged in an extensive review to promote an understanding of these complex issues. This article develops an integrated framework for analyzing wide-ranging relations between individual representatives and patterns of interfirm incompatibility for managerial control.

Methodology/approach: The review involves numerous sources that include articles and monographs. A theoretical framework is constructed to integrate fragmented empirical data. In particular, social identity and commitment-trust theories are mobilized for this framework.

Findings: The review of studies has a substantial consistency with the theoretical framework. The article outlines a causal chain from interpersonal agent dissimilarities to dysfunctional buyer–supplier relations, culminating in interfirm pathological conflict. Moderating factors in the causal chain are: agent identity differentiation (for interpersonal dissimilarity), supplier relations mismanagement (for buyer–supplier relationship quality), and interfirm opportunism (for interfirm pathological conflict). Buyer–supplier interfirm incompatibility mediates the causal link between interpersonal dissimilarity and buyer–supplier relationship quality. Identity differentiation, the validation of one’s self-image, is introduced as a process that determines buyer–supplier agent interpersonal dissimilarity judgments. This framework uses a contextual perspective. It describes interactions between observations of micro-level phenomena of interpersonal dissimilarities and macro-level models of interfirm fit. From a managerial perspective, interpersonal relations between individual buyer and supplier agents may be further strengthened by such strategies as expanding the scope of the interpersonal relationship, relaxation of role responsibilities, and volunteering business-related contact referrals.

Originality/value: A new theoretical framework has been devised to predict and explain relationship quality and interfirm pathological conflict in the business-to-business context. The framework contributes to the value of the knowledge base by serving as a means for building new diagnostic tools for assessment of interfirm behavioral issues affecting exchanges. New concepts are introduced to enhance current literature on business-to-business marketing. The framework provides concrete

indicators that operationally define ideas and enable or improve measurement for empirical modeling.     

Substance in Business-to-Business Relationships

ABSTRACT

The research explores the substance of business relationships within a technical consultancy industry–engineering. Relationships in the engineering industry are project based resulting in close and intense relationships during the project life but with low involvement relationships (if at all) between projects. A model of relationship substance was developed using SEM techniques. The results highlight the actor dimension of the relationships as being essential to overall project performance. Resources, such as knowledge, also played an important role in the relationship model.     

Journal of Business-to-Business Marketing Part I: Subject Listing

The Journal of Business-to-Business Marketing (JBBM), an important thematic journal within the field of marketing, serves as a vital venue for both academicians and practitioners interested in business-to-business marketing phenomena. Articles cover a broad spectrum of topics related to business marketing management. A subject-based listing classifies these articles into sixteen categories according to their key research issues. Those categories are: Advertising and Communication, Brand Management, Buyer-Seller Dyad and Relationships, Channels, Customer Relationships, Education, International Issues, Literature Reviews, Methodology, Networks and Strategic Alliances, Organizational Buying Behavior, Pricing and Value, Product Development, Segmentation, Selling and Salesforce Management, and Technology. After the subject listing, titles and abstracts of all articles appearing in the first fifteen volumes of JBBM are listed in volume/issue order. We hope that this index will provide a useful tool for academicians and practitioners who are interested in business-to-business marketing research     

Buyer–seller relationships of the dental devices industry in Taiwan: perspective of relationship

Purpose: While research in marketing and management has addressed characteristics associated with buyer and seller, relatively little research has been reported on the marketing of relationship benefits and relationship bonding tactics, particularly involving their relationships with customers. Given a dyadic perspective, it can be surmised that gaps in buyer and seller perceptions may well dampen relationships, and will inevitably occur, since a perfect match is highly unlikely between two exchange parties. To enhance relationships, major gaps need therefore to be identified and eliminated. Therefore, the purpose of this study is developing matrices of customer relationship benefits and relationship bonding tactics separately from buyer’s and seller’s perspectives, together with the insights of interrelated propositions.

Methodology: This research subjects chosen for this study consist of those distributors of dental devices, procurement in hospitals, and dentists. Using the grounded theory, four stages of coding analysis are conducted.

Findings: The results indicated that buyers and sellers differed in their perceptions in all field interviews due to their different attitudes toward different benefits. While buyers’ perceived benefits were based on the consideration of confidence and trust in the practical use of purchased medical devices, sellers primarily considered specialized issues of provided services and technologies. Based on this, buyer and seller perspectives were distinguished.

Research Implications: As a self-enclosed system, the medical device industry is difficult to enter for new manufacturers. Therefore, from the perspective of product providers, academic support can increase their product visibility, improve their company’s image, and provide more opportunities to contact new clients. From the perspective of medical institutions, the participation of hospitals and clinics in relationship marketing activities and seminars can raise their prestige and provide more opportunities for gaining new information.

Originality/Value/Contribution: Theoretical contribution of this study is in building matrices of customer relationship benefits and relationship bonding tactics separately from buyer’s and seller’s perspectives, together with the insights of six propositions. These insights shall expose the undisclosed systems of the dental devices industry.     

The Power of Innovativeness in Manufacturer–Retailer Relationships

ABSTRACT

Purpose: Retailers often challenge manufacturers through aggressive store brand policies and severe listing constraints. This study investigates manufacturer innovativeness as a managerial lever to shift the power balance between manufacturers and retailers.

Methodology/approach: Using data from 277 senior managers of Swiss and German consumer goods manufacturers and analyzing these data with structural equation modelling, the authors test hypotheses about the impact of manufacturer innovativeness on manufacturer–retailer relationship characteristics (i.e., retailer dependency, store brand aggressiveness, and listing constraints).

Findings: The study demonstrates that manufacturer innovativeness enhances retailer dependency, which in turn positively affects overall manufacturer performance. This relationship can be explained further: By increasing retailer dependency, manufacturers suppress retailers’ store brand aggressiveness and attenuate retailers’ listing constraints. Store brand aggressiveness affects overall manufacturer performance through listing constraints.

Research implications: Identifying levers such as innovativeness that assist manufacturers in fostering their power over retailers provides a new mode for understanding how manufacturers can influence the balance of power between manufacturers and retailers. The study provides support for the approach/inhibition theory of power on the inter-organizational level. Organizations with increased power are assumed to have approach-related tendencies and act in goal-consistent manner, whereas organizations with reduced power are assumed to develop the tendency to pursue inhibition-related actions, e.g., attending to threats. Furthermore, this study identifies channel relationship characteristics such as retailer dependency as a mediating path between manufacturer innovativeness and performance.

Practical implications: Managers need to strengthen the firm’s innovative capacity to enhance the performance of their companies. By developing the capability to provide radical innovations, manufacturers are able to enhance their performance not only directly but also indirectly by strengthening the manufacturer’s position with regard to retailers. This study underscores the relevance of innovativeness for strengthening the manufacturer’s position in its relationship with retailers that avoids problems with aggressive store brands and constrained listing conditions.

Originality/value/contribution: This study proposes manufacturer innovativeness as a managerial lever to shift the power balance between manufacturers and retailers.     

When Does Relational Exchange Matters? Social Bond,Trust and Satisfaction

Purpose: The extant literature on business-to-business relationship has shown that trust, relationship duration, and social bond are the key drivers of relationship satisfaction. Notwithstanding, studies on the examination of when and why these variables translate into successful relationship are still scarce and need further exploration. This research investigates the conditions under which trust and social bonds influence satisfaction in a business-to-business relationship.

Design/methodology/approach: The data were collected from 159 footwear producers using a structured questionnaire. Four hypotheses were developed and tested using hierarchical multiple regression.

Findings: The authors found support for all hypotheses. Social bonds and longevity are crucial in enhancing supplier relationship satisfaction. Likewise, the role of social bonds in inducing supplier satisfaction heightens over time. However, the positive association between exchange partner trustworthiness and supplier satisfaction works well only in high degree of dependence situation.

Research limitations/implications: The study was based on the report on monadic data and cross-sectional design. Future research should adopt longitudinal design to overcome the shortcomings.

Theoretical implications: This study advances the social exchange theory (SET) by elucidating the condition in which social bonds and trust fail to produce relationship satisfaction. Social bonds fail to enhance relationship satisfaction at the beginning of the relationship. Moreover, trust alone cannot be good enough to boost relationship satisfaction in a lose dependence context.

Managerial implications: This study acclaimed a relationship-driven approach as the best choice for those firms who aspire to build a good relationship with their exchange partner. Managers should understand how and when to develop a strong social relationship with their trading partners, and recognize the situations in which to deal with honest and fair business partners in an exchange relationship.

Originality/Contribution: This is one of the very few studies, which have been conducted to investigate the conditions under which the relational variable influences satisfaction in a business-to-business relationships context. It expanded the boundary of the current literature as it investigated the moderating role of relationship duration and dependence in the relationship between relational constructs and relationship satisfaction.