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As an object of study, mergers and acquisitions are often characterized as containing two entities that in one way or the other become one. Metaphorically, researchers frequently talk about this relationship in terms of a “marriage.” In this chapter, the authors discuss the marriage metaphor with regard to its adequacy in M&A studies. The authors suggest that the metaphor contains strong normative understandings that to some extent condition how we understand M&As. This chapter highlights three dimensions to problematize the metaphor: sequence of events, number of partners, and power relations in a marriage. For each dimension, the underlying metaphorical belief is discussed and a specific risk is identified. The general message is that M&A research should consider more closely the nature of the relationship between the two (or more) parties of M&A to provide a better understanding of which situations that are actually studied.

The purpose of this paper is to explore relationships that seniors (aged 55 and above) experience with prescription pharmaceutical brands, thus attending to situations where consumers have limited control over brand choice.

A phenomenological study was conducted involving interviews with seniors in two Canadian cities. Phenomenology relies on a small number of interviews that are analyzed in depth and describes the lived consumer experience. Data analysis focused on types of relationships participants had experienced with brands and factors that influenced relationships.

Analysis reveals four types of relationships that seniors hold with prescription pharmaceutical brands. The interpersonal relationship metaphor of arranged marriages can be used to describe relationship forms that seniors develop with brands. The quality of relationship seniors have with prescribing physician, who acts as marriage broker, and brand attributes influence relationships with prescription pharmaceutical brands. Consumer's ethos and nature of illness also influence brand relationships.

The study provides insights into brand choice situations where consumers have low control and addresses impact of intermediaries on consumer experiences. It opens the way for further research on mediated brand relationships.

Marketing managers need to understand the role of intermediaries, where applicable, in influencing consumer relationships with brands.

The study closes a gap in academic research (which is sparse) on relationships with prescription pharmaceutical brands held by consumers – specifically older consumers. It also encourages a critical view of the arranged marriage metaphor as a means of understanding consumer‐brand interactions.

The paper seeks to enrich current and future research on the topic of long‐term business relationships within organizational networks through expansion of the marriage metaphor.

The paper reviews the relationship marketing literature as well as incorporating sociological literature dealing with marriage and the family, specifically with respect to inter‐family working relationships. An extended family metaphor is proposed as a more appropriate metaphor for firms involved in network relationships. The paper is divided into three sections. The first contains a re‐conceptualization of the original stages developed by Dwyer et al. (1987). Next, non‐phase elements of these relationships are discussed. Finally, areas for future research building on this metaphor are suggested.

The extended family metaphor implies several interesting opportunities for future research, including investing the compensatory nature of relationships and specific factors that might impact relationship discussion.

This paper brings our conceptual thinking more in line with organizational reality, namely that organizations are more likely involved in dyadic relationships embedded in a network of inter‐relationships. Using an extended family metaphor highlights additional stressors on the relationships, suggesting areas that need attention in an effort to maintain the relationship. It also more clearly focuses on the dynamic of interactions outside the dyad and how these affect the dyadic relationship.

The marriage metaphor has been a catalyst for a wide variety of managerially significant research efforts. This extension of the metaphor to include the extended family may do the same.

The metaphor of warfare pervades popular and academic portrayals of retailing. After a review of the literature on metaphors in marketing and the war metaphor in particular, this paper illustrates the widespread use of the war metaphor in retail and distribution studies and explores in some depth the nature of that metaphor through published depictions of Wal*Mart’s takeover of Asda. It is concluded that use of the war metaphor is both literary and theoretical, but that overuse in the former case may undermine its potential in the latter. Thus it is contended that a reappraisal of the war metaphor in retailing is overdue.

This study explores the nature and role of CEO discourse in mergers and acquisitions (M&A), and especially during the highly complex post-merger integration process. Abstraction from two extensive empirical data sources suggests that executive discourse in M&A can be seen as fitting a taxonomy involving four categories: dubbed the cartel, aesthetic, videogame and holistic communicator. It is furthermore purported that executive sense-making through discourse may need to be monitored around an ideal and permanently oscillating distance between the executive promise and the many different realities that stakeholders experience in the post-merger process: too little distance prevents change from happening, too much distance erodes the belief in the promised possibilities. This distance, named the promise–realities gap, is different for each (type of) stakeholder, as stakeholders perceive both the discoursed promise as also their everyday corporate realities in different manners. This individual perception of discourse and of the multitude of perceived realities and the volatility of their influencing variables exacerbate the successful management of the promise–realities gap.

The metaphor of marriage is frequently invoked in the context of mergers. The evidence is that the success rate for marriages is low and even worse for mergers. In this chapter we explore why mergers often fail to meet the expectations of either party and bring to bear insights from the relational field of marriage counselling to the challenge of achieving cultural development in the wake of a merger. Based on our experience of leading the cultural aspects of a major global merger, we propose some practical methods to help leaders create the conditions for a ‘lasting and happy marriage’.

Relationships are socially constructed by companies in interaction. This study explains the dynamic character of business-to-business relationships with the aid of rules theory, a theory borrowed from the communications field. Two forms of rules are identified: constitutive rules guide the interpretation of the other's acts, and regulative rules guide the appropriate response to the interpreted act. Rules theory asserts that companies act as if applying these rules. Relationships provide not only the context in which the parties’ acts are performed but are also the result of such acts. Thus, relationships are potentially reshaped each time one party performs an act and the other party gives meaning to that act and reacts.

Reviews and analyses press coverage of the takeover of the UK chain Asda by the US company Wal‐Mart in the summer of 1999, using extensive international sources. The depictions of both companies and the significance and anticipated outcomes of the deal are discussed. Three metaphors emerge in the coverage of the deal: of romance and interpersonal relationships; and of logic, strategy and cunning; of conflict and confrontation. It is contended that, on the basis of this coverage, it becomes possible to construct several quite different depictions of the deal, suggesting that a number of realities coexist in our interpretations of retail business.

This paper aims to propose an approach for exploring industrial marketing network environments through a social semiotic lens.

This conceptual paper introduces social semiotic perspectives to the study of business/industrial network interaction.

This paper describes how structures of meaning derived from a cultural history of signification and interpretive processes of meaning in action are co-determined in social semiosis. The meaning of environments using this social semiotic approach is emphasised, leading us to explore the idea of the “atmosemiosphere” – the most highly complex business network level, in illustrating how meaning is made through structuration between structures of meaning and their enactments in interactions between actors within living business networks.

Figurative language plays an important role in the structuration of meaning. This facilitates establishing plots and, therefore, in the actors’ capability to tell a story, which starts with knowing what kind of story can be told. By implication, the effective networker must be a consummate moving “picture maker” and, to do so, she must have competence in narrative, emplotment, myth-making, storytelling and figuration in more than one discursive repertoire.

In using a structurational discourse perspective informed by social semiotics, our original contribution is a “business networks as discursive constructions” approach, in that discursive nets, webs of narratives and stories and labyrinths of tropes are considered just as important in constituting networks as networks of actor relationships and patterns of other activities and resources.

The takeover of Asda by US retail giant Wal‐Mart has created a great deal of speculation by business analysts and the media. Wal‐Mart is recognized as the world’s largest retailer and its move into the UK is creating interest in its future plans for Europe. Some consider that the move will cause a complete realignment of grocery chains across Europe and that the move will be revolutionary. Others consider that the move will simply augment and accelerate current retailing trends but will not completely change the face of supermarket retailing. This issue brings together a variety of viewpoints. First, Paul Whysall reviews and analyses the press coverage. He provides insights into the possible outcomes of the deal. The second piece is an industry insight prepared by Retail Intelligence, which is followed by an overview of the Institute of Grocery Distribution’s research document Wal‐Mart in the UK. Finally, we present a number of abstracts that offer further thoughts on the subject.