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This paper aims to explore how and why salespeople enhance or hinder long-term business-to-business (B2B) customer relationships at the interpersonal level by considering self-disclosure and relational cost and reward evaluations.

Data from interviews (N = 47) with B2B sales professionals were analyzed, focusing on the shift of the phases in long-term B2B customer relationships.

Long-term B2B customer relationships evolve at the interpersonal level through a process of continuous relational cost and reward evaluation, self-disclosure and business disclosure in three phases: becoming business partners, collaborative partners and collaborative and personal partners. The reward evaluations progress from being business related to including even more relational benefits. Disclosure progresses through general business disclosure and general self-disclosure; strategic business disclosure and personal life self-disclosure; and synergistic business disclosure and private self-disclosure.

The long-term B2B customer relationships could be studied at the interpersonal level from the customer’s perspective. Self-disclosure could be studied in cross-cultural settings as well as gender differences should be considered in future studies. Business and social penetration theory could be applied to investigate different types of relationships and other professional relationships, such as those between employers and employees. It would be important to test whether the business-related and self-disclosure subtypes apply to the development of other types of professional relationships or whether other disclosure subtypes exist. The authors recommend exploring salespeople’s and customers’ privacy management strategies in multiple communication channels.

Managers may apply the results of this study in their customer relationship management and sales training.

The findings outline a contextual extension of social penetration theory.

Building trust and living interpersonal trust are crucial corporate executive virtues that are needed today. Once you have developed and solidified a high level of genuine interpersonal trust with all your stakeholders, especially customers, suppliers, and employees, then you are on the right path of managing and transforming your company. A high level of interpersonal trust between all stakeholders and corporates in a business situation will break down communication barriers, foster serious conversation and sharing of ideas, and will eliminate corporate transactional anxieties of fear, mistrust, guilt, rigidity, blame, and resentment. When stakeholders trust you and you trust them, then you speak freely, they speak freely, and your mutual sustained transparency is a gateway to survival, revival, and sustained corporate recovery and transformation, and steady growth and prosperity. Conversely, when there is low trust, high mistrust, and high distrust among stakeholders in a business situation, communications and conversations are stressed and fragmented, teamwork and team spirit are very low, and the company is heading toward its ruin and extermination. Such is the crucial role of interpersonal trust in business. This chapter explores the crucial phenomenon of corporate interpersonal trust. We review various cases, models, concepts, definitions, and theories of trust from the management literature in general, and from the marketing field in particular, to derive psychological, behavioral, ethical, and moral principles of corporate trust, trusting relations, and trusting strategies.

Drawing on social exchange theory and the expectancy–value model, this study has two objectives. First, it sought to explore the mediating role of nurses’ self-concept and affective commitment between perceived organizational support (POS) and three different targets (organization, co-workers and patients) of organizational citizenship behavior (OCB). Second, it aimed to develop a better understanding of how nurses´ self-concept and affective commitment mediate the influence of POS on OCB directed toward different targets through sequential mediation.

A cross-sectional study was conducted with 229 nurses. This sample was representative of the nursing population based on several demographic characteristics. Data analysis was performed using partial least squares analysis.

The study revealed that nurses´ self-concept plays a mediating role between POS and OCB directed toward the organization, co-workers and patients, while affective commitment has a mediating effect between POS and OCB directed toward the organization and co-workers. Finally, the indirect influence of POS on OCB through nurses´ self-concept and affective commitment was significant only at the organizational level.

This study contributes to the extant literature by identifying the mediating role of nurses´ self-concept among social exchange constructs such as POS, affective commitment and OCB directed toward different targets.

The purpose of the paper is to investigate the marketing and communication activities carried out by small management consulting firms and how they relate to customers.

After the framing of the literature on the subject, the study is based on the results of a survey carried out through an online questionnaire. The sample under investigation is represented by 914 small consulting firms located in central Italy.

Results show that half of the sample carried out marketing and communication activities, mainly through the website and social media, while others participating in events as speakers at conferences. It also emerges that management consulting firms carry out activities aimed at maintaining relationship with customers even if they do not invest time in market research in order to find potential and new clients.

The study suggests that management consulting firms should adopt a systematic and strategic approach to communication and should develop a complete and integrated digital communication strategy, as well as to rethink the consulting business model.

There are no previous studies that provide insight into the everyday practice of marketing and communication of small management consulting services in today's dynamic and changing economic environment.

The purpose of this paper is to offer a comprehensive overview of current research on customer behavior in the business-to-business (B2B) context and propose a research agenda for future studies. Despite being a relatively recent area of interest for academics and practitioners, a literature review that synthesizes existing knowledge into coherent topics and outlines a research agenda for future research is still lacking.

Drawing on a systematic literature review of 219 papers and using a text-mining approach based on the Latent Dirichlet Allocation algorithm, this paper enhances the existing knowledge of B2B customer behavior and provides a descriptive analysis of the literature.

From this review, ten major research topics are found and analyzed. These topics were analyzed through the lens of the Theory, Context, Characteristics and Method framework, providing a summary of key findings from prior studies. Additionally, an integrative framework was developed, offering insights into future research directions.

This study presents a novel contribution to the field of B2B by providing a systematic review of the topic of customer behavior, filling a gap in the literature and offering a valuable resource for scholars and managers seeking to advance the field.

Industry 4.0 is dramatically affecting businesses behaviours and strategies, transforming products design, manufacture, operations and services. An outcome of this transformation is digital servitization. This paper aims to contribute to the extant literature about digital servitization in B2B contexts by analysing how I4.0-based servitization affects the quality of supplier–customer relationships.

The authors adopted a qualitative methodology based on an exploratory multiple case study. In particular, the study included 22 Italian B2B manufacturing firms whose I4.0-based digital servitization approaches are described and, then, analysed in relation to the quality of supplier–customer relationships.

The access to customers and data is critical to enable advanced digital services and for improving relationship quality; the levels of relational intimacy and informational openness lead to two subsequent levels of data-driven efficiency and data-driven effectiveness, impacting significantly on relationship quality and enabling relational innovation.

The research explores the link, so far underestimated, between digital servitization and relationship quality in industrial contexts.

This study aims to propose a conceptual framework based on organisational and environmental indicators of business-to-business sellers’ sales performance in services firms.

A descriptive research design was applied and data was gathered from 389 respondents across industries and different-sized services firms in Norway using a self-administered questionnaire.

Results show that the proposed six-dimensional framework of organisational and environmental indicators can be applied to manage seller–customer relationships in a business-to-business environment.

A six-dimensional framework of organisational and environmental indicators is tested successfully in services firms.

Increasingly, services firms will need to work closely with business-to-business sellers to proactively adapt to market changes through a co-creation approach to build long-term seller–customer relationships.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, no previous study has focused on relationship marketing in business-to-business relationships that proposes a conceptual framework based on organisational and environmental indicators of business-to-business sellers’ sales performance in services firms.

Contemporary service and marketing research on value co-creation and value co-destruction assume a one-dimensional view on value, ranging from positive value co-creation, alignment and high value to negative value co-destruction, misalignment and low value. This limitation has recently led researchers to conceptually develop more dynamic spatial-temporal models of how value is formed during the interaction, e.g. in terms of different relationships between practice elements (procedures, understandings and engagements) both within and between actors in “value formation spaces”. However, much of this research awaits validation and is in need of more details. This study aims to address this limitation with the purpose of detailing how and why the mechanisms in such spaces are formed.

Two different and interlinked typologies were analytically derived from previous research and applied on ethnographically-inspired multi-perspective empirical data from a service combining health care and transport service ecosystems, using a combination of interviews, observations and service design methodologies. The design in combination with a practice theory perspective was used to articulate crucial aspects related to understanding the dynamics of value co-formation for elaborative and illustrative purposes.

The study contributes to service theory by conceptualizing as follows: a typology consisting of nine different configurations of practice elements (within and between such elements) and eight possible directions that value formation can take, suggesting a theory that explains value co-creation, value co-destruction and mixed cases.

Although the findings have been developed in a specific empirical context, they articulate a conceptualization applicable to many other service and marketing value co-formation settings.

The typologies are conceptual tools to be used in identifying and measuring the alignment/misalignment of practice elements in complex organizations. The empirical findings uncover service problems faced by disabled customers.

The suggested typologies can guide research and practitioners in understanding and analysing value co-formation mechanisms in complex service settings.

This study aims to propose a theoretical framework and provide empirical evidence on the most successful marketing strategies for obtaining behavioural loyalty in small and medium enterprises (SMEs).

The data are based on 475 telephone surveys conducted among Spanish hairdressers. The authors have used ordinary least squares to estimate the empirical model.

Pricing, services and communication (Web page and in-store communication) are the main drivers of customer loyalty. SMEs have to be cautious with the use of social networks to avoid damaging loyalty. In addition, those positioned at high-price segments should pay more attention to communication on the Web, and all companies should find a balance between in-store communication and the sale of products for use at home.

Further research should try to replicate the findings with data from consumers and firms.

Service managers need to understand the optimal strategy to succeed in the market. The key insights of this study could also apply to other sectors, such as health, personal care and wellness services.

Previous research focussed mainly on large companies, while the role of loyalty in the success of SMEs has been poorly studied, with focus only on the antecedents and the measurement of loyalty. This study contributes to the previous research by analysing the effect of the strategy (price, range of services, communication, size and location) in the achievement of loyalty in SMEs.

Este trabajo propone un marco teórico y aporta evidencia empírica sobre las estrategias de marketing más exitosas en la consecución de lealtad comportamental en PYMEs.

Se ha realizado una encuesta telefónica a 475 peluqueros españoles. El modelo utilizado para la estimación es el de mínimos cuadros ordinarios.

Precio, servicios, y comunicación (página web y comunicación en la tienda) son los principales generadores de lealtad. Las PYMEs tienen que ser cautelosas con el uso de las redes sociales para evitar dañar la lealtad. Además, aquellas posicionados en altos precios deben prestar más atención a la comunicación en la web y todas deben encontrar un equilibrio entre la comunicación en el tienda y la venta de productos para su uso en casa.

Investigaciones futuras podrían replicar este estudio usando datos de consumidores y de empresa.

Los gerentes necesitan entender la estrategia óptima para tener éxito en el mercado. Las ideas claves de este trabajo podrían aplicarse a otros servicios personalizados de salud y bienestar.

La investigación previa se centra principalmente en grandes empresas mientras que el papel de la lealtad en el éxito de las pymes ha sido escasamente investigado y se ha centrado en los antecedentes y la medición de la lealtad. Este estudio realiza una contribución al analizar el efecto de la estrategia (precio, surtido de servicios, comunicación, tamaño y localización) en la consecución de la lealtad en las pymes.

Lealtad; pequeñas y medianas empresas; Pymes; peluqueros; estrategia de marketing; salon

Artículo de investigación

This study aims to evaluate the influence of factors attributed to relationship attractiveness between supplier and customer, from the supplier’s perspective.

The empirical exercise was based on the use of multivariate data analysis with confirmatory factor analysis and a partial least squares approach to structural equation modeling.

The study resulted in a robust model, with a high explanatory factor for the latent variable relational attractiveness and commitment was the most influential factor, followed by expected value and interorganizational trust.

Some limitations of the study can be highlighted: conducting research in a single cooperative and with a single audience; choosing a short-cycle supply chain, which may make it difficult to generalize to other industries; the cross-section nature of data also hinders the analysis to understand how the association between variables of interest may vary over time.

The negative influence of interpersonal trust reinforces the importance of developing collaborative attitudes between parties, whereas the non-significant value for dependence (financial and volume dependence) shows this is not a risk factor for relational attractiveness in a supply chain. Such results provide evidence on how to develop relationship management between suppliers and customers that are part of the same supply chain.

It offers a new perspective for research in cooperatives, which still have no consensus on the motivating factors for members’ participation, including as evidence the results of the largest flower producing center in Latin America. The more a cooperative succeeds in increasing relational attractiveness, the greater the cooperative power and the ability to adapt to shocks and changes, which are fundamental factors for the success and longevity of the cooperative.

The research presents a model that is comprehensive enough to fit in different contexts and consider its specific characteristics. Additionally, this paper has added in-depth information on the relational attractiveness relationships in the context of a developing country.