Comparing customer and supplier perspectives of business relationship value in international trading relationships

With the increasing interest in business relationship issues, relationship value has emerged as an important aspect. What makes a business relationship valuable for the standpoint of the trading partner has become crucial for supplier and customer firms. Alternative conceptualizations and measurement approaches of relationship value have been proposed in the literature of business-to-business marketing. However, the nature of relationship value drivers and the mechanism of value creation have not been addressed in-depth. Drawing on the literature of social psychology, the present paper suggests a conceptualization of relationship value based on 'relative weighting' of the relationship value attributes and develops measures for evaluating business relationship value. The measure is tested using a sample of 97 buyers and 63 suppliers. The results of this study have considerable consequences for firms regarding the process of how value could be created between specific customers and suppliers.