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The purpose of this paper is to examine the technical and relational value proposition preferences of credit union members and to examine the relationship between their preference and patronage activity.

A total of 800 members of credit unions were surveyed. Exploratory factor analysis was used and four factors were extracted incorporating technical and relational dimensions of the credit union service. Member value proposition preferences are examined and the relationship to patronage activity of the credit union was explored.

The majority of members express a higher or equal preference for a relational rather than a technical value proposition. Those that express a greater or equal preference for relational value are more likely to have a higher level of patronage activity.

Credit unions are member-owned financial institutions and hence the study is context dependent. Credit unions are member-owned financial institutions and hence relational value may be more significant than in the case of non-member owned entities.

The research highlights the importance of consideration of relational value in financial services entities whose competitive advantage lies in the relational. In terms of the credit union, the impact on the relational value proposition of the credit union must be considered in the design and implementation of industry restructuring.

This paper extends the emotional value and interactive quality construct to incorporate a greater relational focus which the paper suggests is of greater relevance to high-contact financial services. The research in this paper also extends beyond the criticised static focus of consumer perceived scales (consumer perceived value) and the episode focused service quality scales. Hence, it has a more longitudinal and holistic focus. The paper also incorporates a preference between benefits approach rather than an evaluative or trade-off between benefits and costs framework.

The focus of this article is upstream relational capital, the intangible value of a firm's business relations with its suppliers. The paper aims to propose and test a valuation model of an organization's upstream relational capital that incorporates the leveraging impact of IT investments.

A survey was carried out of 159 CEOs in the wireless telecommunication industry.

Evidence suggests that IT and non‐IT factors contribute to explain abnormal return on relational investments.

This exploratory study is based on a single industry and relational capital is valued by CEO using psychometric scales.

This study shows how IT‐related information helps external investors to value a firm's upstream relationship capital and hence assess the impact of interorganizational IT investments on the firm's valuation.

These results militate for more transparency in regard to relational investments and the relational context of the firm in the management discussion section of the annual report.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the impacts of perceived informational value and perceived relational value on feedback-seeking intention in online communities of inquiry (OCoIs). To develop an integrated theoretical framework, the antecedents of perceived informational value and perceived relational value are also investigated.

This study builds on the relational communication theory (RCT) and the social psychology perspective to develop an integrated research model regarding feedback-seeking. Hypotheses were empirically tested using data collected from 262 subjects who are members of OCoIs.

The results indicate that feedback-seeking intention is positively affected by perceived informational and relational value of feedback-seeking. Furthermore, perceived informational value partially mediates the effects of feedback-seeking self-efficacy and learning goal orientation on feedback-seeking intention; perceived relational value partially mediates the effects of social influence and social risk on feedback-seeking intention.

The results suggest that practitioners can promote feedback-seeking by enhancing learners’ informational and relational dependencies on OCoIs. To achieve effective online learning, practitioners should consider learners’ characteristics to provide personalized learning interventions.

This study advances RCT and the social psychology perspective to develop an integrated model for understanding feedback-seeking. The empirical results complement information-related explanations of feedback-seeking by finding that a relationship-related explanation is more important for promoting feedback-seeking in OCoIs. The proposed model also indicates that tolerance for ambiguity serves as a moderator in the relationship between perceived informational value and its antecedents.

B2B marketing scholarship has acknowledged that relational capital and relationship-specific investments (RSIs) are critical relational drivers for explaining the success of business relationships, especially those in an export-import (E-I) context. However, the literature is still inconclusive on whether E-I partners should accentuate relational drivers to the fullest in order to increase relationship value. By drawing on relational view of competitive advantage and literature that explored the dark side of business relationships, the author builds a conceptual model exploring the boundary conditions (historical ties and relational capabilities) upon which relational drivers enhance or diminish relationship value in key E-I relationships.

To test the proposed model, a survey was conducted among 114 industrial exporters from Croatia. The data was analyzed with the use of confirmatory factor analysis and hierarchical regression.

This study contributes to the international B2B literature in two ways. First, the findings show that in the case of strong historical ties between E-I partners, relational capital has an inverted U-shape association with the relationship value, whereas in the case of weak historical ties this relationship becomes linear. Second, the findings show that an importer’s RSI will lead to the highest relationship value when an exporter reciprocates through employing relational capabilities through which the exporter adapts his business model to the needs of the importer. In case of an exporter’s weak relational capabilities, the relationship between an importer’s RSIs and the relationship value flips into an inverted U-shape.

This study extends the literature on dark side of business relationships by offering insights into the boundary conditions that are essential for sustaining the relationship value in key E-I relationships. The study reveals that historical ties and relational capabilities represent boundary conditions that offer a more detailed explanation what is the optimal configuration of relational drives that would increase the relationship value between key E-I partners.

This work examines the relationship between internal and relational capabilities and the creation of value to the end consumer in the case of the process of receipt, manufacture, and delivery of orders within the supply chain. This work develops a methodology to identify operations that generate core competences and those that do not, with the aim of improving the management of the supply chain.

This work analyses the order fulfillment process in a representative sample of firms operating in a region of Spain. To accomplish the research objectives, a personal survey was conducted using a questionnaire to evaluate 13 activities of the order distribution process in the supply chain.

The results of the study reveal that internal and relational capabilities explain the creation of value to the consumer. They also identify two groups of operations in line with their ability to be sources of relational or internal competitive advantage. With regard to the activities, it was shown that there are some activities that form part of the core competences, while others constitute non-core competences. This work demonstrates that the core activities generate higher value to the end consumer; however, it also shows how important the non-core activities may be to the creation of value.

The work offers orientation as to how the analyzed process should be redesigned to obtain a competitive advantage. Thus, this higher value to the end consumer will enable the firm to reduce prices or at least maintain them, in which case the firm will be able to offer additional services that differentiate it from the competition.

Finally, although the literature contains some works that analyze capabilities or relational performance, none to date have used variables such as activity simplification, integration and relational competitiveness in the framework of relational capabilities in the order fulfillment process. Another significant innovation of this work is the analysis at operation level, in which 13 activities belonging to an important process in the supply chain are analyzed.

The purpose of this paper is to increase the transparency of the value‐creation chain in the stock market. It aims to: conceptualize the value‐added through the relational capital, inductively develop models on how values are created, and discuss the values created for the analyst firm, the clients and investors in the stock market in general.

The paper is based on a case study of sell‐side analysts at a big Swedish investment bank and their work with real life situations of changes in recommendations.

The findings of the case study indicate that analysts, through their relational capital, access competitive advantages needed for remaining on a highly competitive market. They get access to value‐added information and knowledge and also business for the firm. This helps them to fulfill the three roles played, i.e. as information intermediaries, knowledge builders and businessmen. However, the analysts' dependencies, due to their relational capital and the analysts' conflicting roles, result in ambiguous or even biased information. The values added to clients differ between prioritized clients who receive value‐added information through the relational capital with the analysts and non‐prioritized clients with limited, or no access, to the analysts' services.

Value created through relational capital within organizations has been intensively studied within the area of intellectual capital. However, the sell‐side analysts' value‐creation chain linked to their relational capital with company representatives and clients, considered in the present study, has been neglected.

The purpose of this paper is to explore empirically how a distributor's trust in a supplier and its use of control mechanisms affect the values it gains from the relationship.

Factor analysis and a structural equation model were used to test the framework in a sample of 251 distributors in the household appliances industry in China.

The findings show that a distributor's honesty trust in a supplier enhances the direct value gained through the use of both contract and relational norms, but hinders and promotes the indirect value gained through the use of contract and relational norms respectively. A distributor's benevolence trust promotes the direct and indirect value gained through the use of relational norms, but impedes the direct value and enhances the indirect value gained through the use of contracts.

A distributor's trust in a supplier may involve competence trust besides honesty trust and benevolence trust. Hence, the framework can be further studied in the situations where the distributor's trust in the supplier's competence is considered. Moreover, the sample of the empirical study only comes from the household appliances industry, and research in future may be extended to include multiple industries.

The paper may help distributors choose and use the proper control mechanism as well as foster a suitable kind of trust in suppliers to realize the objectives of maximizing the relationship value.

The results permit an in‐depth look into the effects of trust and control mechanisms on the relational values in a channel relationship context.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the impact of a customer engagement-enabling platform on a value captured by the firm and value acquired by the customer. It explores the relevance of relational and expertise value for customers during the engagement process so as to ensure positive referrals about the service provider.

Using a sample of 482 students, the study examines the customer engagement efforts of professional institutes that provide training to prepare for the civil service examinations of the Union Public Service Commission. The survey is confined to central areas of New Delhi, India. Statistical techniques including confirmatory factor analysis and structural equation modelling are used to analyse the data, and reliability and validity tests are performed.

The findings reveal the indispensable role of service providers as creators of a meaningful effective learning process and of interpersonal relations with customers for generating more business through customer referrals.

The study validated the moderating role of relational value between customers’ expertise value and their referrals on the basis of motivation theory, which asserts that customers’ motivation to contribute to the organisation is driven by the individuals’ extrinsic relational need for belongingness, acceptance by like-minded individuals, and feedback, recognition and respect from employees of the organisation.

The study contributes to the existing literature by integrating the well-developed social exchange and motivation theory so as to investigate the factors that propel customers’ positive word of mouth for the service provider.

The authors apply Alan P. Fiske's relational models framework to customers' engagement with service firms – specifically, they propose that customers who hold different relational models for the service firm are likely to engage with the firm in dissimilar ways, thus generating different types of customer engagement value for the firm. Fiske's relational models framework is eminently suitable for studying customer-service firm engagement because it is widely adopted in the social sciences as a rigorously developed framework for conceptualizing social interactions.

The article bridges Fiske's relational models framework and Kumar et al.'s customer engagement value framework, and conceptually demonstrates that customers employing different relational models for the service firm are likely to generate different types of customer engagement value for the firm.

The article demonstrates conceptually that customers' relational models, schemata, and scripts influence how consumers engage with the firm and the type of customer engagement value accruing to the firm.

This research has implications for service firms' relationship strategies. First, service marketers can determine the desired customer engagement value(s) and then craft their customer relationship strategy so that it maximizes those engagement value(s). The article suggests relationship strategies that service firms may implement for encouraging customers to adopt different relational models.

No research has bridged relational models theories and customer engagement value theories.

This paper aims to explore the enhancement of value-added characteristics in strategic supply management by considering manufacturers’ willingness, opinions on relational governance and the effect of relational governance on relationship value.

After a literature review, this study identified the antecedents of relational governance affecting manufacturers, and explored the effect of relational governance on relationship value, taking relationship quality and interfirm learning as the intervening constructs. Data collected from 259 valid questionnaires completed by purchasing managers for the top 2,000 Taiwanese manufacturers were assessed using a structural equation model.

The results indicated that relational governance is directly and positively correlated with relationship quality and interfirm learning; relational quality and interfirm learning are directly and positively correlated with relationship value; and consumer orientation and management innovation are directly and positively correlated with relational governance.

The high explanatory power of the results of the deduced model in this research helps to explain the relational governance of manufacturers toward the suppliers. However, the factors affecting the sustainability of cooperative relationships in service contexts might differ.

Relational governance complements the adaptive limits of contracts by fostering the continuance of exchange and entrusting both parties with mutually agreeable outcomes. Relational governance affects manufacturers’ ability to flexibly adapt and overcome uncertainty in the supply chain relationship.

This study investigated the relationship among governance features that support interorganizational relations and developed precise measures of relational governance. The effect of relational governance on the evaluation of relationship value was examined.