Information Gathering and Customer Value Creation in Business-to-Business Services:

Regardless of whether a product or a service is offered, or whether the customer is an organization or a final consumer, the company that adopts a market orientation (seeks to gather information on the customer and to offer the highest value to the customer) has the greatest potential for success in the marketplace. This study examines whether the adoption of business-to-business services by customer firms is influenced by the perceived level of market orientation of the service provider. Empirical results from the telecommunication industry showed that if the vendor firm were perceived to gather relevant customer information and to provide a more valuable service offer to the customer firm, the customer would weight the value of the service offer more highly in the adoption decision. Managerial implications and directions for future research are presented in the concluding section.