A comparison of the suppliers' and customers' perspectives of functions of international business relationships

The objective of this paper is to enhance our understanding of international business-to-business relationships by presenting empirical evidence on the nature and relative importance of various relationship functions performed by the suppliers and the customers in trading relationships. Using the Indian database generated as a part of the International Marketing and Purchasing (IMP) Group?s multi-country study of international business relationships, the main questions addressed are: What different types of functions suppliers and customers fulfil in the international trading relationships? Which ones are relatively more important from the perspective of the supplier and that of the customer? The author compares the results with a previous study of Chinese firms and comments on the similarities/differences of the firms based in the two emerging countries in managing their relationships with their international partners.