Buyer–Seller Relationships in Business Markets

During the past decade, marketing managers and scholars have focused increased attention on buyer–seller relationships in business markets. This article contributes to the emerging body of knowledge in this important arena. Building from theories of relationships and empirical research across several disciplines, the authors specify six key underlying dimensions (connectors) that characterize the manner in which buyers and sellers relate and conduct relationships. Measures for these relationship connectors (information exchange, operational linkages, legal bonds, cooperation, and relationship-specific adaptations by buyers and sellers) are developed in a series of pretests. Then, on the basis of relationship profiles for more than 400 buyer–seller relationships sampled from a wide array of industries and market situations, the authors apply numerical taxonomy to develop an empirically based classification of different types of business relationships. Contrary to approaches used in much of the extant literature, taxonomic methods do not rely on an assumption that the connectors are highly intercorrelated or that they combine in some linear fashion to form a single underlying dimension. Furthermore, the research specifies antecedent market and purchase situations and shows that they affect when specific types of relationships are used. The research also shows how customer satisfaction and evaluations of supplier performance vary across different types of relationships. The results provide new insights about the nature of relationships in business markets.