Stephan C. Henneberg

Trust and reliance in business relationships

Purpose – The aim of the paper is to define the role of trust and reliance in business relationships.Design/methodology/approach – After this paper identifies gaps in the literature, a conceptual model is developed, and its implications analyzed and discussed.Findings – One of the particularities of trust is its inherent anthropocentricity. As a concept, trust appears to be more applicable at the level of inter‐personal relationships than to inter‐organizational relationships. Business relationships involve both inter‐personal and inter‐organizational relationships. The paper considers a number of other possibilities and argues that there is a need to look at reliance as an incremental intellectual lens on business relationships.Research limitations/implications – Within a business‐to‐business marketing context, the paper discusses the impact of such a multi‐faceted conceptualization for research in business relationships.Practical implications – Marketing researchers often neglect the fact that relations...

Unpicking the meaning of value in key account management

Purpose – This article aims to build on existing literature on value and proposes new perspectives and facets of relational value in key account management (KAM).Design/methodology/approach – Building on traditional value perspectives, value in KAM is conceptually deconstructed and linked with strategic value approaches.Findings – The article finds that a multifaceted key account value perspective includes three different types of value: exchange value, proprietary value, and relational value. Depending on the type of value constellation within a KAM relationship, a number of distinct key account value strategies are presented and discussed.Originality/value – The article provides an innovative concept of value in strategically important business‐to‐business relationships. Based on this, several strategic implications regarding the management of value are derived which enable further empirical research and a more nuanced managerial approach towards KAM.

What sort of community is the European conference on information systems? A social network analysis 1993-2005

This paper presents a social network analysis (SNA) of the European Conference on Information Systems (ECIS) community based on patterns of co-authorship. ECIS contributions are separated into research papers and panels to create social networks that are then analyzed using a range of global network level and individual ego (co-author, panellist) measures. The research community is found to have few properties of the ‘small world’ and to represent an agglomeration of co-authorships. The panels network has the properties of a ‘small world’ and displays a stronger sense of social cohesion. An analysis of individual actors (egos) provides insight into who is central to the ECIS community. Based on the SNA, a range of possible interventions are proposed that could aid the future development of the ECIS community. The paper concludes by considering the usefulness of SNA as a method to support IS research.

The impact of network configurations on value constellations in business markets - The case of an innovation network

A growing body of scholars are advocating a better understanding of how value is created in business networks, rather than merely in business relationships or at the level of single actors. Among such networks, innovation networks, i.e. the configurations of strategic entrepreneurial nets aimed at improving the effectiveness of innovation performance, have come under scrutiny in the business marketing literature. However, research that explicitly connects value considerations with innovation network configurations is still in its infancy, with empirical evidence being notably scarce. This study is aimed at identifying if and how network configurations affect value constellation aspects in business networks, in terms of value recipients and value outcomes. We interviewed key informants representing 46 hightechnology entrepreneurial firms co-located in an innovation network (Daresbury Science and Technology Park UK). Our study identifies that different network configurations can coexist in the same overall network; these, nevertheless, are not alternative independent structures, but rather they interact with each other through actors spanning their boundaries. Our study thus provides an understanding of network configurations relating to specific value consequences, but also provides evidence relating to the interactions between different configurations. By doing this, we establish a bridge between a business marketing and a strategy perspective on value in networks. Important managerial implications and implications for policy makers also emerge from our study.

Measuring customer value and satisfaction in services transactions, scale development, validation and cross‐cultural comparison

Customer value and customer satisfaction are pivotal but at the same time elusive concepts in services marketing theory. This paper focuses on discussing the relationship between these two concepts. We propose operationalization by developing and testing scales, especially operational indicators, for important dimensions and drivers of the services-value construct. A multitrait-multimethod design is used to test the robustness of the operationalization. Furthermore, a cross-cultural data set is used to explore country influences using confirmatory factor analysis and structural equation models. Results indicate that the measurement construct is robust and useful in country-comparative studies.

Political Relationship Marketing: some macro/micro thoughts

Relationship Marketing, and more broadly the placement of networks at the heart of marketing theory and practice, has sometimes been seen by practitioners and theorists alike as a universal panacea. Yet, given the contemporary phenomenon of rapid decline in direct participation in politics, with tumbling party membership rosters, the relevance of relationship marketing and its capacity to re-energise democratic politics has intuitive plausibility. We therefore seek to theorise about relationship marketing in a political context, arguing that the development of a theoretical construct and rigorous conceptual frameworks would invigorate current research on political marketing. We distinguish in particular two approaches - a micro view dealing with specific entity and exchange-oriented aspects, while a macro-perspective will look at the interplay with the wider political structures and the overall political system. Beyond this, the authors are also acutely conscious of the applied perspective and explore various methods by which the concept could be operationalised and grounded in practice. In this article we therefore seek to remedy the literatures remarkable neglect of relationship marketing in politics. There is a crisis in democracy when people perceive politics as something which happens to them rather than something over which they exert ownership, and such a crisis was created in part by the substitution of political marketing tools for face to face contact. These authors thus suggest how political marketing potentially can help solve a dilemma it has helped create.

Theory and concept development in political marketing: Issues and an agenda

Abstract In this article we argue that the state of theory and concept development in political marketing needs to be related to several epistemological as well as topical themes and issues. Seven meta-theoretical issues are discussed with regard to current theoretical position of political marketing research and some initial recommendations are made on how these issues can be developed further. The second part of the article focuses on topical aspects of theory and concept development in political marketing and highlights nine themes for further research. These themes of political marketing are singled out because of their characteristics which show them to be significantly distinct from commercial marketing practice, and therefore need more careful modelling in concepts and theories of political marketing.

Leading or Following?: A Theoretical Analysis of Political Marketing Postures

Abstract While research exists on how political parties use political marketing instruments, there is a lack of emphasis on strategic marketing, especially with regard to theoretical frameworks of political marketing orientation. This can be seen as problematic in the development of political marketing research as a subdiscipline of marketing and political science. A concept is suggested that defines a partys orientation towards political marketing management using two crucial elements of strategic marketing theory regarding customer orientation: leading and following. Three generic types of political parties are characterised by their strategic postures using their stance on these two elements. The implications of strategic postures for the fulfilment of certain political marketing functions and organisational issues are briefly discussed. While traditional parties with a rigid content-based approach towards policy-making can be characterised as Convinced Ideologists, contemporary catch-all parties have moved towards being Tactical Populists. Whilst both these postures are prone to being perceived as dogmatic or untrustworthy and fickle, a third posture, that of Relationship Builder, is proposed. This integrates leading and following, by using a relational approach towards marketing, as suggested in the evolving literature on strategic marketing and marketing orientation. This Relationship Builder stance constitutes a theoretical posture that needs to be clarified by empirical research in the political arena. Thus, to foster further empirical and theoretical research, several propositions have been derived in a process that is in line with the demands of theory-building and hypothesis-driven exploration as suggested for this comparatively new discipline of political marketing.

An Epistemological Perspective on Research in Political Marketing

ABSTRACT Research on political marketing has now established itself as a spirited subdiscipline of mainstream marketing, producing considerable numbers of high-quality learned articles and books each year. However, a certain stagnation in knowledge development has been identified. Consequently, this article links this inadequacy to the dominating tendency of focusing research on campaign applications of marketing instruments, emphasizing a reactive and managerial orientation. In discussing the core of political marketing theory, two different stances are identified: first, a narrow one, focusing on understanding marketing activities in politics, and second, a wider one, concerned with a more holistic attempt of achieving breadth of knowledge of politics. An idiosyncratic discussion of the ontology and epistemological implications of this wider stance identifies four concepts as pivotal: the exchange character of political marketing; a “qualified” market environment; the social embeddedness of the political system in other generic systems; and the structural connectedness of political marketing and politics, implying ethical considerations. While current research limitations in political marketing can be explained by an (implicit) focus on the narrow interpretation of political marketing theory, the wider stance frames a new research agenda for political marketing that provides new directions and less restricted conceptual horizons. The article closes with a discussion of such a new research agenda by providing descriptions of six key research areas of political marketing and outlines implications for the field of political marketing.

The importance of trust vis‐à‐vis reliance in business relationships: some international findings

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to investigate the levels of trust and reliance in different international business markets. The paper aims to obtain empirical evidence regarding the importance of relational aspects (trust) vis‐a‐vis organisational ones (reliance) for building long‐term business relationships.Design/methodology/approach – This is an exploratory study to examine trust and reliance in the manufacturing and construction industries of four countries: UK, India, Pakistan, and Poland. Statistical analysis is based on a data sample of 501 responses collected through a survey of buying and selling relationships.Findings – Although varying across countries, stable relationships with high levels of both trust and reliance exist widely in business markets. Exclusively trust‐based business relationships, i.e. those which are mainly driven by individual‐level aspects, are very rare. However, both trust and reliance are significant for building relationships with long‐term perspectives.Practical...