Managing buyer-seller relationships in industrial markets: A value creation perspective

Abstract

The paper reports on the importance of customer relationships in industrial markets. Our study investigates the way customer relationships increase competitiveness and effective differentiation of industrial firms. The study contributed to the analysis of relationship value creation mechanism and understanding of the role of firm's relational capabilities. We focus on the supplier perceived value and its monetary and non-monetary aspects, and propose to look on the possibilities to obtain advantages by turning inwardly the supplier's firm and analyzing information about firm's relational assets and relational capabilities. The paper presents the conceptual model of relationship-based advantage creation and some findings from empirical study on the base of a sample of 185 German industrial firms.