The power of emotional value: Moderating customer orientation effect in professional business services relationships

Just recently, the literature has established the existence of a dark side with regard to customer orientation (CO) in terms of sales performance. However, no clear position is presented about the possible dark side of CO when it comes to B2B relational outcomes, preventing managers from knowing when to accentuate/suppress CO activities. The aim of this study is to examine the relational consequences of suppliers' CO seen through the customers' lenses, and to investigate the moderating role of perceived emotional value in a professional service relationship context. A conceptual model anchored in value and relationship marketing theories is tested on a sample of 226 professional service firms' business customers, using the PROCESS routine. The study finds that perceived CO is related to satisfaction with the relationship and with relationship performance in an inverted U-shaped form, while satisfaction is positively related to relationship performance. We show that, although preferring to receive CO from their supplier, customers might want a relationship that is not as intense/comprehensive as the one that the supplier aims to achieve. The study unfolds emotional value as a moderating mechanism that can prevent the diminishing effect of CO activities.     

Capturing value creation in business relationships: A customer perspective

Collaborative relationships in business markets are of growing importance to customers and suppliers alike. Customers need to decide whether to invest in a new supplier relationship, to maintain and develop a valued relationship, or to divest from a low-value relationship. Suppliers, in turn, face growing commoditization of products and seek to differentiate themselves through relationships. The measurement of value creation in buyer-seller relationships is still in its infancy, and a sound understanding of how firms create and deliver value in business relationships is needed. Emerging studies investigate relationship value based on dimensions derived from theory and lack a managerial perspective. Therefore, the present research explored relationship value from a grounded theory perspective. In-depth interviews with purchasing managers identified eight value drivers in manufacturer-supplier relationships. Implications for the measurement of the concept are discussed, and directions for further research are suggested.     

Creating value in business relationships: The role of sales

Understanding the creation of value in business relationships has been a long-standing goal of researchers and managers alike. By adopting a relational perspective, recent research on business relationships has made much progress in understanding value-creating processes. As the sales function is thought to be a pivotal part of the value-creating processes in business relationships, the evolving view on creating relationship value clearly has implications for our understanding of the role of sales in these processes. In contrast to its importance, the question of how the sales function contributes to creating value in business relationships has been largely neglected in extant literature. The objective of our paper is to answer this question by systematically linking the relational value creating process to the sales function's content. Interpreting value creation as interaction process, we identify four features of value-creating processes in business relationships suggested in recent research (i.e., jointness, balanced initiative, interacted value, and socio-cognitive construction) and, based on these, outline a framework that is used to define a set of tasks that are key to creating value in business relationships and hence become critical for sales in its hitherto neglected role as co-creator of relationship value. We illustrate the various tasks of this new role of sales with data from 43 interviews with sales managers and salespeople. Along with related normative recommendations in extant literature, the interviews provide support for the validity and relevance of our framework for understanding the role of sales in creating relationship value. This framework puts forward a much-needed first effort towards a theory of sales' role in creating relationship value and offers several opportunities for future research.     

The emergent role of value representation in managing business relationships

This paper explores value processes, their effects, and their management in business relationships. Over time, scholars progressively moved their interest from the value of the objects exchanged to the value of business relationships. However, how value is related to interactive processes that characterize business relationships still remained unclear. With this scope, the paper brings to the fore recent studies on the role of actors' perceptions of value and the interactive features of the business context. The empirical research involves 77 interviews carried out over two years with actors internal and external to the Mikron Tool's business network, a Swiss leader in manufacturing high-precision tools. The study shows that four key value processes – value creation, value communication, value measurement, and value appropriation – determine specific consequences that must be managed to achieve effective business relationships. Moreover, empirical evidences highlight the relevance of value representation in affecting the four value processes. The study contributes to an improved understanding of value management in interactive and interdependent business contexts. Also, it draws attention to the need for a better integration between the traditional economic view of value and recent insights from the fields of organizational psychology and sociology.     

A service perspective on business relationships: The value creation, interaction and marketing interface

Adopting a service perspective or logic on business directs suppliers' focus in business relationships towards engaging with their customers' business processes. The purpose of this article is to analyze implications for value creation and marketing of adopting a service logic in business relationships. In the article it is demonstrated that a service perspective is multi-dimensional, enabling the mutual creation of value, with service as a mediating factor in that process. It is argued that value creation, purchasing, usage and marketing are intertwined processes. Here supplier-customer interactions are in a focal position. This perspective enables marketers to better understand how to develop and extend service offerings through assistance to customers' processes relevant to their businesses. Therefore, the underpinning logic of industrial interactions is analyzed in detail, extending marketing's conventional boundaries.     

A rolling stone gathers no moss: the effect of customers' perceived business model innovativeness on customer value co‐creation behavior and customer satisfaction in the service sector

Both researchers and practitioners have been focusing extensively on business model innovation, as it has shown to positively influence business performance. Although the effect of business model innovativeness on customer behavior might be an important mediator between business model innovation and business performance, it has not yet been analyzed. In line with recent calls to consider the customer side in business model innovation research, our paper addresses this problem by studying the influence of customers' perceived business model innovativeness (CPBMI) on customer satisfaction and customer value co‐creation behavior in the service sector. We, therefore, emphasize customers' perceptions and reactions to business model changes. Relying on data from a large‐scale survey of restaurant customers, we find that perceived value creation innovativeness and value proposition innovativeness positively affect customer satisfaction and customer value co‐creation behavior. In addition, we identify a significant indirect effect of CPBMI on customer satisfaction via customer value co‐creation behavior. Our findings allow deriving concrete implications for both researchers and practitioners.     

The roles of service encounters, service value, and job satisfaction in achieving customer satisfaction in business relationships

Along with variables like the service process, perceived service value and customer satisfaction, job satisfaction of service employees plays a vital role in customer evaluation of service result. However, there has been little in-depth research into the nature of this relation, in particular in the context of B2B relations. In the sphere of an organization providing financial intermediation services to the banking sector and on the basis of a literature review, hypotheses are developed which establish the mediator role of service value and the moderator role of job satisfaction of service employees when delimiting customer satisfaction. Reliability and validity analysis give satisfactory results and our conclusions establish firstly that service encounter directly and significantly affects perceived service value which is the final antecedent to customer satisfaction and secondly, that the level of employment satisfaction moderates its effect on service value.     

Relationships in the purchasing of business to business professional services: The role of personal relationships

There has been a shift from transactional to relational exchange and relationship marketing both in the business to business and professional services contexts. This paper seeks to explore the manner in which personal relationships affect the process and outcomes of purchasing of professional business services. Specifically, it focuses on the role of the professional service providers as boundary spanners in the formation of personal relationships. These personal relationships constitute the underlying basis of long-term relationships between the purchasing and provider organizations in such complex service settings. The findings of this study demonstrate that the manner in which the boundary spanners cultivate relationships support the concept of relationship specific tasks. It extends this conception by use of the data to outline the chronological process over time Understanding the roles, function, and ultimately importance, of these relationships facilitates the identification and development of appropriate strategies to manage these relationships.     

Marketing competencies and the sources of customer value in business markets

This introduction to the special issue discusses the notion of marketing competencies in buyer-supplier relationships, and the role these competencies play in creating value for the customer. Existing work on the role of competencies in industrial marketing has two main foci. The first, established approach deals with competencies as inputs to organizational processes, and seeks to establish in how far marketing competencies such as customer relationship management, channel design, etc. lead to superior financial returns. The second, emerging, approach focuses on the marketing of competencies as a source for customer value. This article uses supply and demand side perspectives to look at these two approaches and suggests a typolology involving four distinct value-creation strategies. Recent literature is discussed and implications for advancing the application of resource-based thinking to industrial marketing are provided.     

The customer as enabler of value (co)-creation in the solution business

Through 31 in-depth interviews with customers and providers of knowledge-intensive business service solutions, this article explores their view on customers' contribution to value (co)-creation. First, the study defines five internal factors that prompt customers to engage with providers for value (co)-creation and discusses unique factors that influence how customers define their needs before engaging a solution provider. In addition, the study suggests extending the known solution process by proposing the problem and need definition phase to reflect the customer's early activities. The results support the theory that customers define their typical needs not only to aid them in selecting the right provider but also to use their awareness of possible issues to guide the solution process. Providers benefit from this definition in that they gain a better understanding of their roles and responsibilities in the process. Second, the study identifies eight variables that typically enable value (co)-creation. The findings show that customers should focus their activities on those variables and providers should identify possible customer shortcomings so that they can compensate for them.     

IMP thinking and IMM: Co-creating value for business marketing

We have extensive knowledge about the thematic development of the business-to-business marketing research. Much less is known, however, how major research contributions are created and disseminated, in brief, how the academic value is constructed between human and institutional actors. We address this issue by examining the relationship between IMM (Industrial Marketing Management journal) and the IMP (Industrial Marketing and Purchasing) research community in the creation of B2B marketing theory from the early 1990s to present. We argue that the relationship between the IMP community and IMM, led by Peter LaPlaca over the past 23 years, offers an exceptional living laboratory for studying academic value creation in the B2B domain. Based on documents and citation data from the late 1980s to 2016 we will show how the parties created new academic knowledge and value for each other through intensive interaction and collaborative activities. In conclusion, we discuss the forms of coordination between IMM and IMP and provide an outlook for the future of this unique relationship.     

Exploring the creation of systemic value for the customer in Advanced Multi-Play

This paper explores the creation of systemic value for the customer as it emerges in Advanced Multi-Play. An anomaly found in customer surveys suggested the possibility of systemic value creation at the offering level. In order to build a theoretical explanation for this anomaly, the role of intrinsic, user network and complement-network attributes is discussed, along with the concepts of complementarities, value of time and goal achievement. More daily communication goals are proposed to form a time boundary condition for an individual, which is relieved by integration providing systemic consistency, experienced as increased efficiency and convenience. As a result, one theoretical model is presented to describe the creation of customer value in the case of integrated offerings. Two propositions are derived from the model, followed by two hypotheses, which are tested. Results indicate customer value creation at the general offering level as a result of integration. The reliability and validity of cross-tabulation is concluded. Finally, suggestions for future research are presented.     

Outward-looking and future-oriented customer value potential management: The sales force value appropriation role

The management of customer relationships based on customers’ value to the selling firm has been a central topic in marketing research for decades. Yet, extant research has devoted only scant attention to the management of customer future value potential, focusing mostly on advanced statistical modeling based on firm-internal and historical data, which often lacks relevance in B-to-B settings. We employ a longitudinal intervention study, rooted in a constructive research approach, to assess the relevance of a novel customer value potential management model in business markets. The results, based on realized sales and customer portfolio dynamics, demonstrate that a firm can effectively manage customer value potential by adopting a non-statistical, sales force-driven analysis perspective. Further, the study presents evidence for the effectiveness of combinative outward-looking and future-oriented value potential criteria in value potential analysis. Finally, the findings demonstrate how a supplier can proactively manage customer portfolio dynamics in the long run by systematically enhancing its competitive position and capitalizing on customers’ organic growth at individual customer account level, through the interplay of organizational value management and sales force value appropriation efforts.     

The role of supplier relationships in the development of new business ventures

New business ventures have rather limited resources, generally suffer from liabilities of smallness and newness and rely on external business relationships, typically with suppliers, for developing and acquiring necessary resources. Yet, to date, research on how new ventures develop initial relationships with suppliers and how these affect the nascent business has been limited. Taking the business network perspective and relating it to studies of supply chain and supplier involvement in product development, our study contributes to the rather limited body of knowledge on new ventures' supplier relationships. Empirically, we draw on a longitudinal, in-depth single-case study of the first two years of operation of a start-up. Our study shows that the development of the key initial supplier relationships starts from open-ended expectations of mutual future relational benefits and involves a stepwise ‘inter-definition’ of solutions in interaction between the parties. We observe that interdependences arise between the new venture and its key suppliers and these enable but also limit, the development paths of both partners. We argue that the key initial supplier relationships extend a new venture's resource and capability base and are an integral part of a new venture's business model.     

Supplier representative activities and customer perceived value in complex industrial solutions

The study of value delivery through complex industrial solutions involves a service-rich deployment of resources, many of which are human. Despite this realization, few studies consider the activities of specific actors in this service-dominant context. Through an exploratory netnography of ten online community discussion boards, this study investigates the link between the activities of supplier representatives and the effects on customer perceived value in complex industrial solutions. The findings reveal four major categories of activity (communication, planning, risk management and coordination) as important sources of intangible value (conceptualized as emotional, social and functional outcomes). The data shows, however, that activities must be executed in a timely, accurate, appropriate and value-added manner. The study compliments research in complex industrial solutions through explicit consideration of activities and their relationship with perceived value from a supplier perspective.     

Customer perceived value in B-t-B service relationships: Investigating the importance of corporate reputation

The importance of customer perceived value (CPV) has been advocated in numerous publications over the recent years. The research presented in this article aims at 1) understanding drivers of customers' perception of economic value, especially when the service provided has high a degree of intangibility, and 2) assessing the consequences of value perceptions. The authors present a theoretical model of antecedents and consequences of CPV in a B2B service industry setting. Corporate reputation, information sharing, distributive fairness and flexibility are modeled as drivers of CPV whereas word-of-mouth (WOM) and search for alternatives (loyalty measures) represent the effects of CPV. A test of the hypothesized model using structural equation modeling showed that corporate reputation had substantially stronger effect on CPV than the other drivers measured. This indicates that when the intrinsic nature of service performance is hard to evaluate, corporate reputation works as substantial shorthand for value. Finally, customers' perceptions of economic value increase their likelihood of recommending the supplier and reduce their tendency to seek information about alternatives.     

Return on marketing investments in B2B customer relationships: A decision-making and optimization approach

The basic notion of relationship marketing entails that firms should strive for mutually beneficial customer relationships. By combining relationship marketing theory and operations research methods, this paper aims to develop and demonstrate a managerial decision-making model that business market managers can use to optimize and evaluate marketing investments in both a customer-oriented and economically feasible manner. The intended contributions of our work are as follows. First, we add to the return on marketing literature by providing a first decision-making approach that explicitly assesses the optimization of marketing investments in terms of profitability, effort, and resource allocation. Second, we show how the risk of marketing investments can be assessed using sensitivity analysis. By means of an empirical study the versatility of our decision-making approach is demonstrated by assessing various critical decision making issues for business marketing managers in detail.     

Exploring the role of spatial relationships to transform knowledge in a business idea — Beyond a geographic proximity

The “space” dimension has characterized the aggregation of firms, ranging from industrial districts to clusters. Within a local system, as emphasized by the Triple Helix model (Etzkowitz & Leydesdorff, 2000), universities, firms, and public institutions generate synergies by producing and exploiting technological knowledge. From this perspective, local relationships become synonymous with spatial relationships characterized by geographic proximity. However, is it possible to find different dimensions of proximity influencing spatial relationships in order to support innovation? This paper demonstrates that different proximity dimensions influence firms' boundaries and the development of spatial relationships through which actors interact to develop resource combinations identified in innovation. After a review of the these topics, the paper provides findings related to the spatial relationships developed by Petroceramics as a hosted spin-off of the Italian Technological Pole (POINT) as well as its subsequent relocation to the Kilometro Rosso Science Park. As such, this paper deals with how technological knowledge is transformed into a business idea through spatial relationships based on different dimensions of proximity.     

The effects of service supply on perceived value proposition under different levels of customer involvement

Based on the resource-based view and service-dominant logic, this paper tries to examine how the process of offering product-centric or knowledge-centric services can integrate heterogeneous resources so as to create customer perceived value. In product-centric service supply, the tangible product itself is central to the provision of an integrated set of services, while in knowledge-centric service supply, intangible knowledge is central to the provision of an integrated set of services. The effects of the two dimensions on customer perceived value are quite different. This paper examines the specific conditions under which these effects arise by highlighting the important role of customer involvement as a way of mobilizing resources between the supplier and the customer. It adopts a large sample survey in the Chinese fine chemical industry. The results show that the two kinds of service supply can yield short-term economic value and technical value to buyers. Long-term relational value, however, can only be achieved through the mediating role of short-term value and only if customers can acquire knowledge-centric services. In addition, the effect of knowledge-centric service supply on technical value is stronger if the customer has a greater rather than lower extent of involvement.     

Building trust in US-Japanese business relationships: Mediating role of cultural sensitivity

While evidence suggests trust plays a fundamental role in maintaining successful buyer-seller relationships in Japan, little is known conceptually as to how foreign sellers can best develop trust in the minds of their Japanese customers. In this research, we develop and test a multi-component model of US seller actions that manifest key trust-building processes (intentionality- and capability-processes) which sellers find effective in building trust with their Japanese buyers. In this unique cultural context, theory suggests trust develops when sellers demonstrate benevolent intentions toward the buyer and exhibit a strong capability to fulfill business promises. An analysis of 181 US sellers in Japan demonstrates that a combination of trust-building efforts is recognized as being critical in seller attempts to develop and sustain trust on the part of their Japanese customers. Importantly, cultural sensitivity mediates the impact of intentionality-based practices on buyer trust, while capability-based activities directly influence trust.