Sustaining mutual beneficiary relationships is vital in supplier-customer dyads.The relationship value (co-)creation starts to become a common dominator inachieving such relationships. Surprisingly, the empirical evidence is lacking indefining what actual value the supplier and customer can (co-)create in business-tobusiness (B2B) settings, and what roles these parties play in such processes. As thefirst step to address this gap, the present research constructed the literature-basedpreliminary conceptual framework on the supplier-customer relationship value (co-)creation. The functionalist perspective of creating a value by the relationship valuecreating functions and sub-functions was adopted. The supplier-customer commonperception and the purposeful intent on the relationship value creation for theintended beneficiary were considered as the condition for the relationship value cocreation. The preliminary conceptual framework was then empirically examined andexplored in the context of third-party logistics (3PL) outsourcing relationships. Forthis, qualitative semi-structured interviews with some of Europe’s leading suppliersand buyers of 3PL services were conducted. The analytic induction researchapproach and theoretical sampling method was utilised. The empirical data wasanalysed by the combination of the qualitative content analysis, hermeneutics andnarrative analysis methods. Also, the theoretical saturation approach was employedfor defining the sufficiency of the collected data, while the reliability and validityprocedures ensured the credibility of the analysis. As the result of the empiricalstudy, the new empirically-based framework on the B2B supplier-customerrelationship value (co-)creation was established. The theoretical contribution of thisresearch was proposed by comparing the literature with the empirical evidence ofthis study. The empirical results served as a basis for improving the preliminaryconceptual framework, resulting in the final conceptual framework. Finally, themanagerial contributions of this research and the future research directions weresuggested.
Date of Award | 19 May 2016 |
---|
Original language | English |
---|
Awarding Institution | - University Of Strathclyde
|
---|
Sponsors | University of Strathclyde |
---|