The authors note how the lack of proper support services impedes the adoption process for capital goods characterized as installations. Unstructured interviews were conducted with key managers, technical personnel, and boundary role individuals. In particular, service support factors between...

Many manufacturers of high‐involvement products who sell to other businesses know that relationship building is important to the success of the firm. However, these same companies may not know how to go about building a relationship with a client, or they may have tried and failed to build...

As with all relationships, it is commonly agreed on that partners in business must have a high degree of commitment towards their relationship. If commitment is lacking, the relationship will soon come to an end. Affective commitment, that is commitment based on attraction between partners, is...

The complex interplay of religion, reputation and repeated transactions among trade and business communities that dominate the Indian intermediary markets are detailed. Using prior historical sociological and ethnographic accounts, the author highlights some unique aspects of Indian merchant...

Examines the individual buyer‐supplier relationships of the four major Japanese automobile manufacturers. Building on the relationship marketing and the interorganizational trust literature, relates their supplier management practices to the type of supplier organizations they use, the...

Examines the pattern of relationships between foreign manufacturing firms and local third‐party distributors and the effective management and co‐ordination of supplier‐distributor relationships in China. Case studies of four foreign‐funded food manufacturers in China have been conducted....

Identifies market segments for a category of business services, namely building maintenance services. Hitherto there has been little research on business service segmentation. Data has been collected through written surveys and analysed by factor analysis and cluster analysis. Although only one...

Develops and tests a model of team orientation in the global purchasing process of a Fortune 500 multinational services organization. Based on a sample of 179 domestic and 167 international strategic business units (SBUs), the results indicate that team orientation in a purchasing unit is...

Examines possible reasons behind the current rapid growth of national accounts. In particular, it examines how relationship marketing/selling has increased the need for national account programs. The article first provides a review of the national account management literature. Then, findings...

This case study is the result of in‐depth investigation into a major Swedish multinational company in the data processing and computer equipment field. Addresses the issue of key account management and questions some of the existing views in the literature. In particular, it demonstrates that...