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Marketing metrics represent a growing concern for practitioners and scholars alike. Among the performance measures at the individual account level, customer share emerges as a concept of growing interest, yet marketing lacks rigorous customer share metrics in business markets. In addition, the construct's position within the nomological net of relationship marketing in a business-to-business (B2B) context remains unclear. This research reports findings of a cross-sectional study among purchasing managers in U.S. manufacturing industries, which indicate a positive link between customer value and customer share in business relationships. Relationship benefits have a stronger impact on customer share than do relationship costs, such that sourcing and operations benefits appear to represent the most promising levers for effective customer share management. The results finally suggest that researchers should operationalize customer share in relative terms when investigating key supplier relationships across different industries.

Business marketers increasingly pursue greater shares of their customers' business. While the merits of such a strategy are straightforward from a supplier perspective, this paper aims to explore its consequences from the customer's point‐of‐view.

Drawing on resource‐dependence theory, value and dependence are established as fundamental characteristics of buyer‐seller relationships. Data envelopment analysis is used as a benchmarking tool to integrate these characteristics into a common efficiency score indicating the customer‐perceived attractiveness of a sourcing relationship. A post‐DEA‐regression‐analysis explores the link between sourcing attractiveness and relative customer share.

This research suggests a quadratic relationship between sourcing attractiveness and relative customer share. The perceived level of sourcing attractiveness improves until the local maximum is reached and declines beyond a relative customer share of 61.33 per cent.

Additional fraction of variability (R²) in sourcing attractiveness explained by customer share displays a modest, yet substantial, level. Studies on customer share in comparable contexts found similarly low levels.

Sourcing attractiveness provides an interesting metric for assisting managers in their decision‐making. Instead of comparing supplier relationships across the board, the proposed approach allows to compare relationships against their best‐in‐class benchmark. Findings suggest that the vast majority of supplier relationships still offers avenues for further improving the existing supply bases. Pushing the share of customer beyond its optimum level, however, will have negative consequences for the customer‐perceived attractiveness of the sourcing relationship.

The paper contributes to a better understanding of the consequences of customer share marketing from the customer's perspective.

Established models of buyer‐seller relationships do not reflect managerial emphasis on supplier performance evaluation when modelling business relationships. Proposes that relationship value should be included as a key constituent in such models. Aims to explore the construct's links with key constituents of relationship quality, i.e. commitment, satisfaction, and trust.

A two‐stage research design was used. First, depth‐interviews were conducted with ten senior‐level purchasing managers in US manufacturing companies. Second, data were gathered in a nation‐wide mail survey among 400 purchasing professionals.

The findings suggest that relationship value is an antecedent to relationship quality and behavioural outcomes in the nomological network of relationship marketing. Value displays a stronger impact on satisfaction than on commitment and trust. Value also directly impacts a customer's intention to expand business with a supplier. In turn, its impact on the propensity to leave a relationship is mediated by relationship quality. Contrary to previous research, trust does not appear in this study as an antecedent of behavioural outcomes, but as a mediator of the satisfaction‐commitment link.

Confirms the role of value as a key relationship building‐block. Researchers should integrate this cognitive performance‐based construct in models of business relationships. Limitations and research directions refer to the sampling procedure, the need to include the supplier's value perceptions, the possibility of conducting longitudinal research, and the opportunity to assess additional moderating variables.

When the goal is to increase business with an existing customer, managers should focus on relationship value. In turn, when managers are concerned with the risk of customers leaving a relationship, they should focus on relationship quality. Trust appears as an important ingredient in stabilising existing business relationships.

Stresses the pivotal role of relationship value in marketing. Contributes to a better fit between relationship marketing models and managerial practice in business markets.

The purpose of this paper is to present the results of a study that examined how customers in the USA, France, and Korea perceived and classified a set of 13 services based on multidimensional scaling (MDS).

A MDS framework was used to map service classifications and actual services in the USA, Korea and France. Results from each country were then compared to the other two countries to determine similarities and differences.

Results from this research suggest that there are two underlying dimensions that explain approximately 80 percent of the total variance in service perceptions and classifications. Underlying dimensions of the classifications across the three cultures were virtually identical. Differences among the countries were based on relative positioning of classifications and/or services on the underlying dimensions.

Evidence from diverse cultures implies that consumers perceive services in a somewhat simplistic, two‐dimensional fashion rather than the complex set of classifications proposed by researchers. Although the complex classifications may be of use to service providers in organizing the delivery of services, the presentation and positioning of those services is along a much simpler framework in the minds of customers.

This is the first time consumer‐based perceptions of services have been examined systematically across cultures using a MDS approach.

In the services marketing literature, few service classifications are based on how customers view services, and fewer of these have been validated cross‐culturally. To fill this gap, this research presents the results of a study that examined how US and French customers perceived and classified a set of 13 services based on multidimensional scaling. Service classifications were developed on a perceptual space where the actual services were mapped for two countries, the USA and France. The results of the study suggest that there are two underlying dimensions that explain approximately 80 percent of the total variance in service perceptions and classifications. The dimensions and correlations for the classifications and services displayed many consistencies and some differences among American and French consumers. Directions for future academic research and managerial implications are cited and discussed.

In recent years, there has been a resurgence of interest in the value construct among both marketing researchers and practitioners. Despite a growing body of research, it is still not clear how value interacts with related marketing constructs. Researchers have called for an investigation of the interrelationship between customer satisfaction and customer value to reduce the ambiguities surrounding both concepts. Investigates whether customer value and satisfaction represent two theoretically and empirically distinct concepts. Also addresses whether value is a better predictor of behavioral outcomes than satisfaction in a business marketing context. Two alternative models are developed and empirically tested in a cross‐sectional survey with purchasing managers in Germany. The first model suggests a direct impact of perceived value on the purchasing managers’ intentions. In the second model, perceived value is mediated by satisfaction. This research suggests that value and satisfaction can be conceptualized and measured as two distinct, yet complementary constructs.

This first paper examines total benefits and total costs of product–service designs as antecedents to customer value assessment. It introduces the reader to all the papers in this volume. The first half of the paper offers a model of customer value assessment. This section describes research studies in industrial marketing contexts that illustrate the core propositions in the model. The second half of the paper provides brief introductions to the papers in this volume; these papers offer further evidence supporting the view that discontinuous innovations offer superior customer value but customers tend to eventually become increasingly comfortable with the status quo and move away from adopting superior proven technologies. This paper advocates being mindful of the marketplace dynamics affecting value. The volume serves to increase knowledge and understanding of the dynamic forces affecting changes in customer value.

The purpose of this article is to provide a brief summary of all the articles in this special issue.

Briefly discusses each article in this special issue.

This special issue of Journal of Business & Industrial Marketing aims to understand in greater depth both business‐to‐business purchasing and various types of buyer‐seller relationships. The authors selected 14 articles that provide an in‐depth understanding of the critical issues involved in purchasing orientations.

The article highlights how the papers in the special issue seek to understand in greater depth both business‐to‐business purchasing and various types of buyer‐seller relationships.