Buyer-seller Dyad Research Articles

Value (co-)creation in B2B sales ecosystems

Purpose Digital ecosystemic business environments challenge dyadic approaches to value creation and particularly to business-to-business (B2B) sales. This paper aims to offer a novel conceptualization of the connection between value creation and B2B sales, which indicates practical implications and builds an agenda for future research. Design/methodology/approach This conceptual paper integrates theoretical insights on service-dominant logic, service ecosystems, interactional value co-creation and B2B sales. This paper uses anecdotal evidence from the field of B2B sales to illustrate theoretical concepts developed in the paper. Findings The paper develops the concept of value idea emergence (VIE), the process through which B2B entities become aware of a pursuable benefit. The paper further proposes that value (co-)creation in ecosystems happens through VIE’s intertwinement with the process of value proposition creation, a process, which includes all activities needed to bring a value proposition to a customer. The paper then discusses the role of B2B in these processes and proposes an agenda for future research. Practical implications The novel conceptualizations of value (co-)creation can help B2B sales managers to understand the ecosystemic nature of the interactions that affect sales and value creation in the current business environment. Originality/value The paper contributes to the literature on B2B sales and value creation by proposing a novel concept of VIE, introducing a conceptual model of interactive value (co-)creation in ecosystems and reformulating the role of B2B sales in value creation. These theory-developing insights can be used to guide both academic and managerial attention to interactions happening in the ecosystem outside of the buyer-seller dyad.

Calculative Trust and Interfirm Contracts

Interfirm contracts are plagued by opportunism arising from exchange hazards that increase the seller’s gains from holdup in fixed price contracts. These exchange hazards are higher when the seller can engage in unverifiable deliberate obfuscation. Although cost-plus contracts reduce holdup losses, they suffer from cost inefficiency. Past research has underscored the importance of trust as a control instrument to mitigate losses from exchange hazards, especially social relational trust that develops from past experiences. However, trust can also be calculative when it develops from the expectation of future economic gains to the buyer-seller dyad. We identify two dyadic mechanisms that generate calculative trust and curtail the likelihood of cost-inefficient behavior in cost-plus contracts. These mechanisms include future potential and bilateral reputation capital for cost containment. Analysis using probit estimations on 149 information technology outsourcing contracts for the period 1998 to 2005 suggests that calculative trust increases the likelihood of cost-plus contracts. Thus, calculative trust can mitigate inefficiencies in interfirm contracts.This paper was accepted by Shiva Rajgopal, accounting.

Interpersonal Relationship Marketing: Reciprocity in Buyer-Seller Dyad with Customer Gratitude as Mediator

Interpersonal Relationship Marketing: Reciprocity in Buyer-Seller Dyad with Customer Gratitude as Mediator

Interpersonal Relationship Marketing: Reciprocity in Buyer-Seller Dyad with Customer Gratitude as Mediator

Interpersonal Relationship Marketing: Reciprocity in Buyer-Seller Dyad with Customer Gratitude as Mediator

Trust and duration of buyer-seller relationship in emerging markets

PurposeThis study aims to examine how various components of interpersonal trust (affective and cognitive) influence the duration of buyer-seller relationships in the emerging market (EM) context of a heterogeneous market structure dominated by small, fragmented sellers/suppliers.Design/methodology/approachThe study proposes a hazard model for analyzing duration effects of interpersonal trust in the EM context. The model was validated using data on buying agents provided by 340 cocoa sellers/producers in Ghana, gathered from extensive field interviews.FindingsResults of the survival analysis reveal a limited but significant positive duration effect of cognitive (ability) trust only. Further analysis of sellers’ duration intentions (intention to remain with a buyer) also reveals a positive impact of affective trust but no impact of cognitive (ability and integrity) trust. Cocoa bean sellers’ evaluation of buying firms’ purchasing agents suggests that buying firms underperform on emotional/affective components of interpersonal trust, and that private firms outperform state buying agents on ability trust as well.Research limitations/implicationsWhile this study focused on the fragmented nature of sellers in the EM context, and the scope was limited to the sellers’ interpersonal trust perception of the buyer-seller, future research should examine both buyer and seller perceptions to obtain complete insight into the buyer-seller dyad in the EM context. In addition, the results of the duration effects identified in this study may not be generalizable to other EM export commodities, where channels have long been fully privatized. Ghana’s cocoa export marketing system was only recently privatized, and potentially has more sellers at the risk of adopting/switching relationships with their buyers than would be expected in more privatized expert commodity marketing systems.Practical implicationsManagers of export commodity buying firms in EMs can take advantage of the positive duration effects of cognitive trust by constantly improving the capabilities of their purchasing agents throughout the lifetime of their suppliers to sustain their relationship. However, sellers’ intention to switch can be mitigated by formalizing policies that encourage emotional bonds with sellers, especially small-scale producers in highly vulnerable bargaining positions. The aggregate output of small-scale producers could be of strategic importance in the future.Originality/valueManagers need systematic empirical evidence of the nature of duration effects of interpersonal trust given anecdotal evidence suggesting that managers have a tendency to emphasize cognitive trust over affective/emotional trust. Further, the applicability of such evidence in the EM context is critical given unique conditions such as highly fragmented sellers dealing with relatively large corporations.

Cultural adaptation in cross-national buyer-seller relationships

Purpose– The purpose of this paper is to investigate how buyers and sellers in cross-cultural business relationships manage cultural differences to ensure functional, successful business relationships. Failure to consider specific cultural issues may lead to the failure of business ventures crossing national borders. To succeed in today’s global business market, it is critically important to understand and manage cultural differences. Adapting to each other’s cultures is one way of managing cultural differences between business actors.Design/methodology/approach– A qualitative, explorative approach examining both sides of the exchange dyad was adopted to obtain insight into adaptation as perceived by both buyer and seller.Findings– The results of this study indicate that mainly Norwegian sellers adapt to the Russian culture and way of conducting business. This is explained by power asymmetry between partners, as well as cultural barriers and lack of cultural sensitivity from the Norwegian partners. Still, the business relationships function well.Practical implications– Knowledge of and applying strategies for managing cultural differences should be helpful for business managers engaged or planning to engage in business ventures with Russia and Norway – especially those doing so for the first time.Originality/value– The study provides new and important information about West-East business relationships and how to manage cultural differences in cross-cultural business relationships. The study shows that business relationships can function well in spite of the absence of some factors previously found to have detrimental effects on these relationships. In addition, the study investigates both sides of the buyer-seller dyad, which is a limitation in previous studies of adaptation.

Influence of religiosity on retail salespeople's ethical perceptions: the case in Iran

Purpose– The main purpose of this research was to investigate whether there is a relationship between religiosity and ethical behavior of salespeople.Design/methodology/approach– To investigate this association, structural equation modeling (SEM) was used; also, both exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses were undertaken to examine a scale measuring salespeople's ethical behaviors. The context in which the study was conducted was in Iranian retail specialty stores.Findings– The results revealed for the first time the impact of religiosity on ethical behavior of the seller, a key entity in the buyer-seller dyad, that had been virtually ignored in extant empirical work.Research limitations/implications– The study focused solely on retail salespeople in Iran. Future research should examine the religiosity-ethical behavior nexus using other kinds of sales personnel and those practicing other kinds of religion than the Shia Muslim faith investigated here. The investigation examined the association between religiosity and ethical behavior. Future work could include additional measures of religion (e.g. religious orientation) as well other individual, cultural, and organizational factors that may have an influence on salespeople's ethical conduct.Practical implications– Sales managers should try to convince salespeople to behave ethically. Also, sales managers should not establish unachievable sales objectives for salespeople and try to employ more religious individuals as salespeople. Multinational corporations (MNCs) should treat Shia Muslim salespersons with the utmost of respect, relying on their word. Similarly, MNCs should incorporate ethical guidelines into their training classes in order to be able to communicate conveniently with local salespeople and persuade them to act more ethically.Originality/value– The authors believe that this research can arouse managers in retail stores to set specific plans for evaluating their ethical behaviors. This research also has managerial and research implications for designing and formulating operations strategy in providing ethical standards for sales force.

Managerial perceptions of service-infused IORs in China & India: A discursive view of value co-creation

This paper explores the managerial challenges facing firms seeking to build relationships with other network actors while doing business in foreign markets. By taking a critical perspective on an area of increasing importance in both manufacturing and service sectors, that of value co-creation, the paper explores how managers in different cultural contexts make sense of the notion of ‘value’ in inter-organizational B2B relationships between New Zealand service and service-infused supplier firms and buyers in China and India. From an analysis of the interview-based accounts on both sides of the buyer–seller dyad marked differences emerge regarding value-creation within managers' discourse around partnerships, collaboration and cooperation. Our findings suggest that the Indian manager's discursive use of ‘partnership’ draws on service-dominant logic in viewing this type of interaction as a means for co-creating value; they and their New Zealand suppliers are jointly involved in co-creating value within a service system, creating value-in-use. In contrast, the predominant perspective seen in the discourse of Chinese managers is the use of cooperation as a means of making transactions more cost-effective, or to fill gaps in their supply chains, resulting in the creation of transaction-based, co-production of value, which suggests a value-in-exchange orientation. In both cases, there is repeated reference to more peripheral actors whose efforts result in what we interpret as network value creation, based on their interactions with actors within the buyer–seller dyad.

The Impact of Guanxi on Ethical Perceptions: The Case of Taiwanese Salespeople

Purpose: Extant empirical work demonstrates that guanxi can foster favoritism or preferential treatment toward certain customers, which could lead to unethical business behavior. However, scholars have not investigated the potential effect of guanxi on ethical perceptions in a crucial extra-organizational context: the buyer–seller dyad. This article seeks to address the lacuna and examines the impact that guanxi has on Taiwanese salespeople's ethical perceptions. Methodology/approach: A survey of salespeople was used to test the proposed hypotheses. A sample consisting of Taiwanese salespeople from firms in the finance, insurance, information technology, direct selling, food and beverage, fashion, tourism, health care, and agriculture (all B2B) industries was used. Findings: Results indicate that expressive tie sales personnel tended to have lower ethical concern than their instrumental tie counterparts. Relative to instrumental tie sales personnel, mixed tie salespeople manifested less ethical concern in the scenario that was considered to be the most ethically nettlesome. Practical implications: Because guanxi affects sales personnel's ethical perceptions—thus indicating that they may compromise their organization for the good of their customer—it is important for companies to regulate guanxi building in terms of what can and cannot be done, with a range of flexibility and corresponding rewards and punishments. Ethical practices should be incorporated into salespeople's job responsibilities to encourage appropriate ethical decision making. Top management also needs to reinforce codes of ethics and demonstrate the importance of practicing ethical behavior. In addition, training programs should demonstrate how ethical conduct can be valuable for the salesperson, customer, and company even in the presence of guanxi. Clear guidance is important to both firms and salespeople. It could help salespeople become keenly alert about ethically problematic situations and make appropriate judgments about them. The end result could create an ethically healthier environment for business transactions and further avoid preference, fraud, and abuse.

Social Capital and Contract Duration in Buyer-Supplier Networks for Information Technology Outsourcing

This paper presents new evidence on the role of embeddedness in predicting contract duration in the context of information technology outsourcing. Contract duration is a strategic decision that aligns interests of clients and vendors, providing the benefits of business continuity to clients and incentives to undertake relationship specific investments for vendors. Considering the salience of this phenomenon, there has been limited empirical scrutiny of how contract duration is awarded. We posit that clients and vendors obtain two benefits from being embedded in an interorganizational network. First, the learning and experience accumulated from being embedded in a client-vendor network could mitigate the challenges in managing longer term contracts. Second, the network serves as a reputation system that can stratify vendors according to their trustworthiness and reliability, which is important in longer term arrangements. In particular, we attempt to make a substantive contribution to the literature by theorizing about embeddedness at four distinct levels: structural embeddedness at the node level, relational embeddedness at the dyad level, contractual embeddedness at the level of a neighborhood of contracts, and finally, positional embeddedness at the level of the entire network. We analyze a data set of 22,039 outsourcing contracts implemented between 1989 and 2008. We find that contract duration is indeed associated with structural and positional embeddedness of participant firms, with the relational embeddedness of the buyer-seller dyad, and with the duration of other contracts to which it is connected through common firms. Given the nature of our data, identification using traditional ordinary least squares based approaches is difficult given the unobserved errors clustered along two nonnested dimensions and the autocorrelation in a firm’s decision (here the contract) with those of contracts in its reference group. We use a multiway cluster robust estimation and a network auto-regressive estimation to address these issues. Implications for literature and practice are discussed.

Does a Consumer’s Religion Really Matter in the Buyer–Seller Dyad? An Empirical Study Examining the Relationship Between Consumer Religious Commitment, Christian Conservatism and the Ethical Judgment of a Seller’s Controversial Business Decision

Religion is an important cultural and individual difference variable. Yet, despite its obvious importance in consumers’ lives, religion in the United States has been under-researched. This study addresses that gap in the literature and investigates the influence of consumer religion in the buyer–seller dyad. Specifically, this study examines the influence of consumer religious commitment and a Christian consumer’s conservative beliefs in the United States on store loyalty when retailers make business decisions which are potentially reli- gious objectionable. This study uses structural equation modeling and applies Anderson and Gerbing’s (Psychol Bull 103(3):411–423, 1988) two-step approach to exam- ine data obtained from a national sample of 531 consumers. The results from this study suggest that consumers evaluate seller’s actions and form ethical judgments. These judgments are a major explanatory variable in consumer store loyalty intentions.

The Role of Social Capital in Assuring Market Performance: Evidence from Information Technology Outsourcing Contracts

This paper presents new evidence on the role of embeddedness in predicting contract duration in the context of Information Technology (IT) Outsourcing. Contract duration is a strategic decision that aligns interests of clients and vendors, providing the benefits of business continuity to clients and incentives to undertake relationship specific investments for vendors. Considering the salience of this phenomenon, there has been limited empirical scrutiny into how contract duration is awarded. We posit that clients and vendors obtain two benefits from being embedded in an inter-organizational network. First, the learning and experience accumulated from being embedded in client-vendor network could mitigate the challenges in managing longer-term contracts. Second, the network serves as a reputation system that can stratify vendors according to their trustworthiness and reliability, which is important in longer term arrangements. We analyze a dataset of 22039 outsourcing contracts implemented between 1989 and 2008. We find that contract duration is indeed associated with structural and positional embeddedness of participant firms, with the relational embeddedness of the buyer-seller dyad and with the duration of other contracts to which it is connected through common firms. Given the nature of our data, identification using traditional OLS based approaches is difficult given the unobserved errors being clustered along two non-nested dimensions and the autocorrelation in a firm’s decision (here the contract) with those of contracts in its reference group. We employ a multi-way cluster robust estimation and a network auto-regressive estimation to address these issues. Implications for literature and practice are discussed.

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

Diverging expectations in buyer–seller relationships: Institutional contexts and relationship norms

Many firms assume that outsourcing partnerships may allow them to strengthen their overall competitiveness. Lured by its intuitive appeal, several enter into such partnerships, only to realize that they represent a marginal rather than a magical solution to their quest for increasing market performance. An important reason for this is the diverging beliefs and expectations held by both parties in the buyer–seller dyad. The purpose of this contribution is to develop a framework for understanding the divergences in expectations and relationship norms in cross-cultural business relationships among SMEs. We discuss four relational expectations derived from the B2B literature on relational norms for addressing these divergences: Quality, frequency and scope of communication, role specifications and coordination of work nature of planning horizons, and trustworthiness and link these to relationship performance. We explore the proposed impact of diverging relationship norms on relationship expectations using data from an ongoing field study of Danish buyers and Chinese suppliers. We link these diverging expectations to the business practices of Danish buyers and Chinese and their institutional contexts. In the concluding part of the paper, we discuss our findings and outline implications for management and academia.

A Comparison of Turkish Buyers' and Sellers' Perceptions of Ethical Behaviors Within the Buyer-Seller Dyad

ABSTRACT This paper examines the differences between Turkish buyers and sellers with respect to ethical sensitivity and the perceived impact of ethically questionable behavior on the buyer-seller relationship. The results of a survey sent to buyers and sellers indicate that buyers are more ethically sensitive than sellers. In addition, buyers tend to view the impact of ethically questionable behavior (on the buyer-seller relationship) as more negative than do salespeople. Additional results and implications for salespeople are provided.

Managing Asymmetric Resource Dependence and Environmental Risk in Relationships by Real Options

mrev management revue , Seite 89 - 106

Journal of Business to Business Marketing Part I: Subject Listing

ABSTRACT The Journal of Business to Business Marketing, 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 16 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, Technology. After the subject listing, titles and abstracts of all articles appearing in the first ten 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.

The Impact of Internet Exchanges on Business-to-Business Distribution

The authors review an incumbent business-to-business distributor of electronic components faced with the entry of more than 50 Internet-based competitors and offer an explanation for why the distributor prevailed. Underlying the explanation is an assertion that the appropriate unit of analysis is the buyer-distributor-seller triad, not the buyer-seller dyad. In the case examined, the channel activities were interrelated such that when each party calculated the costs and benefits of the activities that occurred within this three-way relationship, they outweighed the net gains from disintermediation or Internet intermediation. Particular conditions favoring the status quo included existing activities for sharing customer identification information between the distributor and the seller, a high proportion of negotiated distributor-customer contracts, and new entrants’ reliance on open technologies. While no claims are made about the generalizability of this explanation beyond the case studied, the authors believe their assertion and hypotheses may have broader applicability.

On Closeness to the Customer in Industrial Markets

ABSTRACT Recent years have witnessed a resurgence of academic and practitioner interest in the way companies interact with their customers. While there has been considerable scientific progress in the understanding of market orientation and buyer-seller relationships, limited attention has been given to the concept of closeness to the customer. Specifically, there has been no valid measure of the construct as a whole. This paper reports the development of a valid 28-item measure (called CLOSCUS) for assessing industrial firms' closeness to the customer. The development of the scale is based on a literature review, field interviews as well as statistical analyses of two independent samples from different sides of the buyer-seller dyad. Results indicate that seven factors underlie the 28 items. These are related to product, service, and process quality (two factors), flexibility in dealing with customers (one factor), and the way of interacting with customers (four factors), respectively. Based on the CLOSCUS scale, closeness to the customer is shown to impact on a customer's commitment, trust, and satisfaction. It is also demonstrated that closeness to the customer is both conceptually and empirically distinct from market orientation which contradicts some marketing researchers' prior statements. The paper concludes with some experiences from applications of the scale in a number of German companies.

Dependence relations and the moderating role of trust: implications for behavioral intentions in marketing channels

This paper examines how the behavioral intentions of channel members are likely to be moderated by trust perceptions when dependence is high or low. An experimental research methodology using a 2 × 2 factorial design was employed in a contrived marketing channel. Data were collected in two stages; first from business-school students in a behavioral laboratory and subsequently from managers representing an array of firms. The results indicate the important role of trust in explaining intentions to cooperate, exert controls, and adopt a strong influence stance in a buyer-seller dyad. Dependence also influenced intent to corporate and willingness to adopt a strong stance but had no effect on intentions to exert controls.