Ivan Snehota

Making the Most of Supplier Relationships

Abstract The supply side is on top of the management agenda in most companies, reflecting an increasing strategic attention to benefits that can be gained from cooperation with suppliers. In particular, partnering has been suggested to be the superior solution for making the most of supplier relationships. It is argued in this paper that this recommendation oversimplifies the issues involved and, if followed blindly, may be bad for practice. Developing partnerships with suppliers is resource-intensive and can be justified only when the costs of extended involvement are exceeded by relationship benefits. The article examines the economic consequences following from different degrees of involvement with suppliers. Our conclusion is that a company can be highly involved with only a limited number of suppliers and needs a variety of relationships—each providing its different benefits. Furthermore, it is discussed how the extent of involvement relates to the economic importance of the supplier, the continuity of the relationship and the sourcing strategy of the buying firm. The core of our argument is that the capacity to cope with a variety of relationships in differentiated ways has a profound impact on performance. When the approach of the buying firm shifts from purchasing to making the most of supplier relationships, a richer analytical framework is required to deal with the complexity of the new task.

Value creation and organisational practices at firm boundaries

Purpose – Growing awareness that value for the customer is created in relationship between the supplier and the customer has consequences for sales and marketing functions, and businesses are increasingly experimenting with new organisational approaches and solutions. The purpose of this paper is to investigate organisational issues involved in implementing value programs in B2B firms and examine implications for managerial action. Design/methodology/approach – After a literature review on value creation in business relationships, the authors illustrate the case of a large industrial business experimenting with organisational solutions to support value-creation processes in customer relationships. Findings – The authors identify three issues management has to address in organising the customer interface: involvement of a variety of actors to access elements of effective customer-value solutions; supporting and orchestrating the interaction processes among those involved; and differentiation of the custome...

Corporate associations in B2B: coping with multiple relationship-specific identities

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to explore how corporate associations emerge in business networks focusing on mutually attributed identities in customer-supplier relationships. The role of the mutually perceived identities for interaction behaviours of the parties is examined and consequences of multiple emergent identities for management are discussed. Design/methodology/approach – The paper is a conceptual one starting from an overview of prior research on corporate associations in marketing, findings on distinctive features of business markets and review of studies on identity in interaction processes. Findings – Departing from various strands of research on the origin and role of corporate associations in the literature the authors argue that corporate associations, in business networks are relationship specific and continuously emergent, and that businesses acquire multiple identities in relation to main stakeholders as customers and suppliers. The relationship specificity, emergent nature and...

Construction of meanings in business relationships and networks

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to address an issue related to the role of interaction processes in the development of customer-supplier relationships in business markets. Design/methodology/approach – Focusing on the role of cognition in interaction behaviours in business relationships, the authors examine two research streams that offer perspectives on interaction processes akin to the IMP – the socio-cognitive perspective and the practice-based approach to markets and marketing. Findings – The two research streams analysed contribute to understanding the link between cognition and interaction behaviours by pointing to the construction of meanings as an important factor in interaction behaviours and indicating storytelling as a tool to construct meanings among the actors. Originality/value – This paper is among the few studies that focus the attention on communication processes in business relationships and networks.

Netnography approach as a tool for marketing research: the case of Dash-P&G/TTV

Purpose – Online communication technologies have profoundly affected consumption and buying behaviours, and put pressure on businesses to find ways of dealing with these developments. Businesses are increasingly experimenting with new approaches and tools to keep up, and netnography – ethnography applied to the web – has become popular. However, exploiting the potential of netnography requires companies to cope with new problems and acquire new capabilities. The purpose of this paper is to examine the organizational and managerial implications of using the netnographic approach in market research. Design/methodology/approach – After a literature review on netnography in marketing research, the authors present a case study of best practice of netnography for market research: the research project of Dash-Procter & Gamble on Motherhood Support. Findings – The authors found four issues as critical for exploiting the potential of netnography as a tool of market research: first, immersive involvement; second, m...

Learner Satisfaction in Marketing Simulation Games Antecedents and Influencers

Simulation games have become widespread in business courses, yet the understanding of their learning effects remains limited. The effectiveness of using simulation in marketing classes is not uniform, and not all students welcome it to the same extent. Drawing on a survey among 173 students engaged in a simulation game as part of a course in a 2-year business graduate program, we employ “expectation–confirmation theory” and the “unified theory of acceptance and use of technology” to develop a model to investigate the relation between Learner Satisfaction and Performance Expectancy and Effort Expectancy with a marketing simulation game. In addition, we examine the influence of Age, Gender, Course Type, Course Stage, and Recalled Performance. We report that Performance Expectancy and Effort Expectancy drive Learner Satisfaction. We also find Recalled Performance of students to be related to Learner Satisfaction. We discuss the implications of our results for the use of marketing simulation games in business programs in relation to experiential learning theory linking Learner Satisfaction to learning outcomes. In light of our results, instructors can affect the learning experience from simulation games by acting on Performance Expectancy and Effort Expectancy as antecedents of Learner Satisfaction.

3 Starting Up: Relating to a Context in Motion

The odds that a start-up succeeds are low. The risk of failure during the first three years is estimated at 85 %; statistics show that only a few newly started businesses survive more than a handful of years (Short, McKelvie, Ketchen, & Chandler, 2009). Despite these odds, the number of entrepreneurs who want to start their own business continues to grow, and the interest among policy makers and investors remains. Since such unfavourable statistics persist, despite research on entrepreneurship and the support which start-ups receive, our understanding and knowledge about the process of establishing and developing a new business venture is apparently rather limited or not fully relevant. Following a certain tradition in new venturing studies (Gartner, 1985), in this chapter we use the notion of ‘start-up’ when we refer to the pre-organizational stage, and that of ‘new business venture’ when the enterprise acquires the features of an organized activity system (drawing a clear line is of course arbitrary but this is not really central to our purpose in this chapter).

Commentary on “Business-to-Business Marketing Textbooks: A Comparative Review”

ABSTRACT The commentary discusses the analysis of the content of business marketing textbooks by Backhaus, Mell and Sabel and in particular the dichotomy managerial used to classify the approaches adopted. It is argued that such a dichotomy tends to veil different and changing assumptions regarding the task of marketing management in business markets, and the claim is made that the interplay between the different approaches is beneficial for the development of the body of knowledge of the discipline of business marketing.

Management in the Interactive Business World

Abstract The issue dealt with in this chapter is the role of management in developing and maintaining business relationships among companies. Interdependent business network structures result from interactions in dyads between single actors and interactions among all involved actors collectively. Managers as ‘architects and constructors’ of business relationships, involved directly in developing the relationships between customers and suppliers, are mostly middle-management positions rather than top management. Purchasing managers, sales managers and technical managers are fundamental for the development of business relationships as they create value in business relationships. Relationships between companies cannot be developed unilaterally; they have to be developed jointly. Since value creation requires involvement of others, motivating other actors and mediating are fundamental in developing relationships and creating value. The effective development of business relationships of value hinges on the capability and skills of management to work with and through others, to relate to others and to cope with interdependencies that arise in relationships. However, the capability of a company to interact and create value in business relationships is not simply a sum of individual managerial skills; it is an issue of organising the interfaces in relationships to other business.

Developing New Business Relationships: An Outside-In Perspective

There is a considerable body of research on ongoing customer-supplier relationships in business markets, but empirical research on the development of new business relationships and early stages of business relationships is more limited (Edvardsson et al., 2008). The initial phase of development of a business relationship appears to pose specific problems with important consequences for marketing and management of business relationships (Aaboen et al., 2011; Gadde et al., 2012). The relationship marketing literature in general implies that development of new customer-supplier relationships tends to be intentional and results from the identification of exchange opportunities and the development of an economically convenient offering (Gummesson, 1996; Sheth & Parvatiyar, 1995). In contrast research dealing with business relationships has shown that the initial phases of a business relationship are often “chaotic” for the managers involved on both sides and the development often takes unexpected directions. This aspect of the customer-supplier relationship development is rather neglected in the general relationship marketing literature. Since business relationships develop as a sequence of interactions that take place between two counterparts (Holmlund, 2004), an investigation of interaction processes is required to understand how new relationships start. In this paper we report a case study describing the interaction processes when business relationships are initiated and illustrates how contextual factors affect the process. Exploring the development of a business relationship between previously unconnected businesses we focus on the role played in relationship development by exogenous factors.