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This study aims to examine whether and how cultural (dis) similarity between business entities enhances or impairs the development of commitment in the trust building process in industrial importer-foreign supplier relationships.

Drawing on theoretical lenses of transaction cost economics, resource-based view and dynamic capability view, this study investigates how cultural (dis)similarity moderates the effects of opportunism, transaction-specific investment (TSI), the relative advantage of importing and communication on commitment, leading to building trust in business relationships. Using structural equation modeling and moderated regression analysis, the study tested several predicted effects using a sample of 154 industrial importers drawn from a developing country in Asia.

A key finding of the study suggests that supplier opportunism comes into play and is negatively associated with industrial importer commitment as cultural dissimilarity increases. For culturally similar countries, opportunism does not affect commitment. Conversely, TSI has a positive effect on commitment for culturally similar countries; for dissimilar countries, TSI has no effect. The study also corroborates several additional hypotheses prevalent in the literature.

Cross-sectional data rather than longitudinal data, single country rather than multi-country perspectives and data from the importer’s side rather than from both importer and exporter may affect generalizability. Future research ought to address these issues to provide further insights.

The paper enriches the literature and extends the nomological network for international business theory by introducing the moderating effect of business cultural similarity in building commitment. Managerial perspectives are also gleaned from the findings.

The purpose of this paper is to explore international buyer–supplier relationships in an emerging developing country context. The study examines a number of factors derived from internationalization process (IP) theory and their impacts in a novel research setting. The relational variables of trust and commitment, and their drivers, are integrated into a model examining importers’ perspectives of their supplier relationships.

This study applied a sequential methodological approach. Initially, a conceptual framework was developed from qualitative research and then quantitatively validated using structural equation modeling (SEM). The data for this study were collected conducting in-depth interviews and survey questionnaires. For empirical validation, the SEM technique was applied to assess the proposed model.

Importing firm managers perceived that the commitment of their suppliers bolstered their trust in the relationship, this contrasts with the conventional contention of a reverse relationship. The findings confirm cultural similarity facilitates communication, leading to increased knowledge and experience of importers, thereby contributing to an enhanced commitment to build trust in the relationship.

The conceptual framework developed in this study provides a direction to manage and enhance understanding of IP and relationship outcome. The findings have strategic implications for practicing managers in developing and supporting their importer–foreign supplier relationships.

This study is unique in assessing as well as validating key constructs of IP theory in an international exchange (importer–supplier) relationship. The study offers completely a new insight in relation to applying IP theory’s relational perspectives.

This study explores the influence of informal “psychological contracts” (PCs), (as opposed to formal contractual relationships) on exporter–distributor relationships.

Data were obtained from a sample of 127 exporting small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in New Zealand. The authors employed partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) for analyzing the measurement and structural models.

Psychological contract fulfillment (PCF) enhances affective commitment and calculative commitment. Moreover, affective and calculative commitments mediate the relationship between PCF and export venture performance (EVP). The authors also find that institutional distance (ID) weakens the relationship between PCF and both affective and calculative commitment. Additionally, ID moderates the strength of the mediating mechanism for affective commitment; thus, the authors present a moderated-mediation model.

To date, international relationship marketing (IRM) literature has focused on PC breach, and business-to-business (B2B) marketing literature has focused on the effects of PCs on affective/relational commitment. This study offers novel insights by demonstrating the positive indirect effect of PCF on EVP via the mediating variables – affective and calculative commitment. The authors' findings also present a conditioning role of ID on the micro-level relationships of PCs.

This study seeks to provide insights concerning the predictors of industrial importers' commitment to their foreign suppliers in a relationship paradigm involving an emerging market.

Integrating a review of the relevant importer-exporter and distributor-supplier relationship literature, a model of importer commitment was developed. Based on survey data obtained from industrial importers for an emerging market, CFA and SEM were employed to test the proposed theoretical model.

The findings significantly support the theoretical framework and most of the hypothesized path relationships in the model. Predictors such as importers' knowledge significantly and positively influenced commitment through the intermediation of trust, supplier opportunism had a significant and negative effect on importer commitment, again through the intermediation of trust, and transaction-specific investment had a direct effect on industrial importers' commitment. Supplier's opportunistic inclinations did not have a significant direct effect on the commitment of the importers.

This research only considers the views of industrial importers that limits generalization. The sample size, constrained by the total number of industrial importers in the country examined, was also somewhat of a limiting factor concerning SEM modeling.

This study suggests the factors that export managers need to consider in maintaining long-term relationship with their foreign buyers, while contributing to building the relationship through knowledge sharing and curbing opportunistic inclinations.

This paper examines the antecedents of trust and commitment in industrial importer and foreign supplier relationships in the context of an emerging market. Based on the earlier literature on B2B exchanges, the role of importers' knowledge in driving commitment through the intermediation of trust offers new insights. This is particularly important because the importers are experiencing unprecedented growth opportunities. Considering their need to make decisions quickly and gain advantages from suppliers, will they remain committed to a particular supplier? Or will their commitment be strengthened by gaining knowledge of the supplier? The tested model offers unique insights.

In the mainstream relationship management literature, critical appraisal of the relationship paradigm in an international setting is virtually non-existent. The extant literature reveals a gap in terms of linking relationship management theories with international management. Furthermore, little research attention has been paid to synthesise the existing theories in a cohesive manner towards developing a theoretical paradigm in the interface of the importer-supplier relationship dyad. Thus, the purpose of this paper is to strengthen the theoretical grounds of relationship marketing in an international setting in an importer-exporter relationship context.

The paper follows a comprehensive review approach and applies the fundamental theory of trust and commitment to identify the relational factors. More precisely, the paper identifies and applies other relevant theories such as internationalisation process theory, resource-based theory of the firm, dependence theory and transaction cost theory in developing an innovative theoretical paradigm.

Based on the integration of extant theories, this paper proposes a new direction in the theoretical realm of the trust and commitment building process within an importer and supplier relationship management paradigm. The research concludes that trust and commitment are the focal factors within the international relational paradigm.

The proposed research direction suggests an emerging framework integrating mainstream theoretical variables of trust and commitment in importer and foreign-supplier context. This novel framework has the potential for use in further research.

This paper advances a grounded theoretical exploration within an international management domain in the context of importers and foreign-suppliers.

Relationship trust and commitment are two key dimensions of international exchanges. Both have been extensively investigated from an exporter (as opposed to importer) perspective in developed country (as opposed to developing country) contexts. To address these gaps, this paper aims to develop a model of antecedents and outcomes of importer trust and commitment in two developing countries.

The paper tests the proposed model using data from Chile and Bangladesh. Hypotheses are tested using structural equation modeling (SEM).

SEM analysis reveals that most of the hypotheses are supported in both the Bangladeshi and Chilean context. The findings of this paper also suggest that the effects of importer transaction‐specific investments on importer commitment are distinct in the Bangladeshi context.

Practically, these results show that trust and commitment are essential for enhancing importer relationship performance in developing countries. Importer trust in a foreign supplier is effective when suppliers are competent and provide relatively superior facilities, as opposed to opportunistic proclivity. Importer commitment to a foreign supplier is stronger when importers perceive that the foreign supplier is not opportunistic, but is knowledgeable and experienced with the importer market, and they perceive that it is an advantage importing from that supplier. Cultural similarity between importers and foreign suppliers improves importer trust in both countries. However, importer commitment in Chile increases with importer transaction‐specific investment, but this is not found to be the case in Bangladesh.

This paper contributes to the importer‐exporter exchange relationship literature by testing a model of antecedents and outcomes of importer trust and commitment. The tested model is one of few that considers developing country contexts and incorporates two novel antecedents of trust and commitment: importer knowledge and experience, and supplier resource competency.

To investigate the influence of supplier‐performance criteria on importers' decisions to repurchase from the same source, in the context of wine‐importing.

Selection criteria were derived from the literature and preliminary discussion with importers. Hypotheses were formulated, linking criteria and performance attributes to post‐purchase re‐buying intentions. Data were collected by self‐completion questionnaire from 152 UK‐based wine importers, and analysed by multiple regression.

Supplier performance with respect to relationship commitment, payment facilities and product quality has a positive impact on repurchase intentions; the influence of price and brand recognition was found to be insignificant.

The study was limited geographically and by questioning only importers. Future study should investigate relevant behaviour across a wider spread of countries, business types, decision parameters and external variables, and collect data from exporters as well as importers.

It is concluded that suppliers should focus strategy on all the decision‐criteria investigated in the study, rather than on the narrow base typically found in practice. Exporters should nurture strong relationships with importers, emphasise consistent product quality, and offer flexible payment arrangements. Branding is a route forward, and price will be an issue in the highly competitive UK market.

This is the first study to empirically test the effect of suppliers‐performance criteria on importers' repurchase intentions.

Contemporary literature reveals that, to date, the poultry livestock sector has not received sufficient research attention. This particular industry suffers from unstructured supply chain practices, lack of awareness of the implications of the sustainability concept and failure to recycle poultry wastes. The current research thus attempts to develop an integrated supply chain model in the context of poultry industry in Bangladesh. The study considers both sustainability and supply chain issues in order to incorporate them in the poultry supply chain. By placing the forward and reverse supply chains in a single framework, existing problems can be resolved to gain economic, social and environmental benefits, which will be more sustainable than the present practices.

The theoretical underpinning of this research is ‘sustainability’ and the ‘supply chain processes’ in order to examine possible improvements in the poultry production process along with waste management. The research adopts the positivist paradigm and ‘design science’ methods with the support of system dynamics (SD) and the case study methods. Initially, a mental model is developed followed by the causal loop diagram based on in-depth interviews, focus group discussions and observation techniques. The causal model helps to understand the linkages between the associated variables for each issue. Finally, the causal loop diagram is transformed into a stock and flow (quantitative) model, which is a prerequisite for SD-based simulation modelling. A decision support system (DSS) is then developed to analyse the complex decision-making process along the supply chains.

The findings reveal that integration of the supply chain can bring economic, social and environmental sustainability along with a structured production process. It is also observed that the poultry industry can apply the model outcomes in the real-life practices with minor adjustments. This present research has both theoretical and practical implications. The proposed model’s unique characteristics in mitigating the existing problems are supported by the sustainability and supply chain theories. As for practical implications, the poultry industry in Bangladesh can follow the proposed supply chain structure (as par the research model) and test various policies via simulation prior to its application. Positive outcomes of the simulation study may provide enough confidence to implement the desired changes within the industry and their supply chain networks.

This paper aims to propose an integrated model based on buyer and supplier opportunism to show the mechanism through which current and competing suppliers influence buyer market competitiveness.

Questionnaires were distributed to purchasing staff in listed electronics firms in Taiwan to collect empirical data. Structural equation modeling was used to analyze these data and examine the fitness of the proposed model.

The findings show that current and competing suppliers influence buyer market competitiveness through supplier opportunistic behaviors and buyer commitment. The alternative attractiveness of competing suppliers affects buyer market competitiveness through the influence of asset specificity. Supplier opportunism negatively and indirectly influences buyer market competitiveness through buyer commitment. Nevertheless, buyer opportunism does not influence buyer commitment and market competitiveness.

The investigation focused on only one industry in one country. Future research could investigate other industries and countries to increase the generalizability of the findings.

The results suggest that buyers can focus on utilizing the pressure of alternative suppliers to improve market competitiveness through increased specific investments by the current supplier.

On the basis of buyer–supplier opportunism, this study shows the mechanism through which the asset specificity of current suppliers and alternative attractiveness influence buyer market competitiveness.

Knight's Industrial Law Reports goes into a new style and format as Managerial Law This issue of KILR is restyled Managerial Law and it now appears on a continuous updating basis rather than as a monthly routine affair.