We investigate a business-to-business context and ask <i>when</i> and <i>why</i> a firm should announce a "reference program" that commits the firm to facilitating the flow of information about the efficacy of its products from early adopters to potential late adopters. We model a monopolist manufacturer with...

Recent research has empirically characterized the buyer-seller relationship as dynamically evolving from one discrete state to another. Conventional wisdom would suggest that a customer in a higher relationship state that has a higher transaction value would also have greater lifetime value to...

Even though the importance of Key Account Management (KAM) in building long term buyer-seller relationships is widely recognized in literature this long term perspective of KAM lacks appropriate empirical examination. The purpose of this study is to propose a conceptualization of Key Account...

The focus of this study is the impact of competitive relationships on the effectiveness of channel relationship management strategies. We argue that the characteristics of a reseller’s relationship with alternative manufacturers influence his/her evaluation of the relationship with a focal...

A great deal has been written recently in the practitioner press about the strategic importance and usage of social media. However, as practitioners only release limited information about the internal advantages such a tool provides, research in this emerging field remains extremely limited...

As companies increasingly recognize the importance of interaction with customers, relationship marketing is assuming a central place in both marketing theory and practice. The purpose of this working paper is to offer a general overview of the roots of relationship marketing as well as of its...

Science is a social process that functions through social networks of researchers that form invisible colleges. Analysis of these social networks provides a means for examining the structure of relations among researchers. The Industrial Marketing and Purchasing (IMP) group, "an informal...

Despite of the empirical evidence that shows that customer information utilization may improve a company's customer and business performance, customer information utilization is underdeveloped in many companies. This research contributes to the understanding of customer information generation...

La crescente competizione globale che coinvolge sempre più intensamente anche i mercati industriali ha portato negli ultimi anni diversi Autori ad interrogarsi circa il ruolo potenziale che la marca può assumere per l’affermazione di vantaggi competitivi in tali contesti. Prendendo avvio da...

The authors dedicate this paper in honor of the memory of their deceased co-author, Erin Anderson. In dyadic business relationships, parties can be incorrect in reading their counterparts' relational closeness. For example, they can overestimate or underestimate the counterpart's commitment to...