JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.. American Marketing Association is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Journal of Marketing.Marketing theory and practice have focused persistently on exchange between buyers and sellers. Unfortunately, most of the research and too many of the marketing strategies treat buyer-seller exchanges as discrete events, not as ongoing relationships. The authors describe a framework for developing buyerseller relationships that affords a vantage point for formulating marketing strategy and for stimulating new research directions. UMMARIZING 15 years of debate on the conceptual domain of marketing, Hunt (1983a) concludes that ". . . the primary focus of marketing is the exchange relationship" (p. 9; also see Ferber 1970; Kotler 1972; Kotler and Levy 1969; Kotler and Zaltman 1971; Luck 1969, 1974). The relative permanence of that view has been instituted by the recent theoretical advances it has fostered. Examples include Frazier's (1983a) framework for interorganizational exchange, Bagozzi's (1975, 1979) developing theory of exchange, and Weitz's (1981) contingency model of selling. Exchange also occupies a central role in the unfolding political economy framework (Achrol, Reve, and Ster 1983; Amdt 1983; Stern and Reve 1980) and a host of more specialized empirical studies. Each of the works cited relies on the notion of exchange for four key conceptual benefits. First, ex-F. Robert Dwyer is Associate Professor of Marketing and Sejo Oh is a doctoral student in marketing, University of Cincinnati. Paul H. Schurr is Associate Professor of Marketing, State University of New York, Albany. The authors thank Chuck Brunner and the JM reviewers for helpful comments on previous drafts. Partial funding for this research was provided by the College of Business Administration, University of Cincinnati.change serves as a focal event between two or more parties. Second, exchange provides an important frame of reference for identifying the social network of individuals and institutions that participate in its formation and execution. Third, it affords the opportunity to examine the domain of objects or psychic entities that get transferred. Finally, and most important, as a critical event in the marketplace it allows the careful study of antecedent conditions and processes for buyerseller exchange.Despite the importance generally ascribed to the idea of exchange, marketing research has largely neglected the relationship aspect of buyer-seller behavior while tending to study transactions as discrete events. The lack of attention to antecedent conditions and processes for buyer-seller exchange relationships is a serious omission in the development of marketing knowledge.Ongoi...

Marketing theory and practice have focused persistently on exchange between buyers and sellers. Unfortunately, most of the research and too many of the marketing strategies treat buyer-seller exchanges as discrete events, not as ongoing relationships. The authors describe a framework for developing buyer-seller relationships that affords a vantage point for formulating marketing strategy and for stimulating new research directions.

New products provide increased sales, profits, and competitive strength for most organizations. However, nearly 50% of the new products that are introduced each year fail. Organizations thus find themselves in a double bind. On the one hand they must innovate consistently to remain competitive, but on the other hand innovation is risky and expensive. Many organizations are forming business alliances to quicken the pace of and reduce risks associated with innovation. Yet by some estimates, 70% of these alliances fail. Many of the prescriptions for successful alliance management clash with recommendations for effective innovation management. The authors develop testable hypotheses by integrating the new products and alliance literature. A construct-cooperative competency-derived from related concepts of mutual adjustment, absorptive capacity, and relational capability is posited as the key factor affecting new product development success, regardless of whether it is an intra-or interfirm endeavor. The authors test the model with data from a sample survey in the semiconductor manufacturing context and replicate it in the health care sector. The antecedents of cooperative competency-formalized and clannish administration, mutual dependence, and institutional support-are revealed empirically and substantiated. The authors identify the importance and means of developing interfirm cooperation.

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Like any system, a marketing channel will thrive only to the extent it can secure critical resources from the environment. Using a resource dependence perspective, the authors hypothesize that a weaker member's access to relatively munificent output markets can mitigate a power advantage held by the channel partner that otherwise is used to bureaucratize the channel and endanger the quality of the channel relationship. The authors use a structural equation model to analyze data from dealer informants in the auto industry. The results suggest munificence affects the internal workings of the channel.