Although combining friendship and business in the same relationship can be beneficial, it can also create conflict. A source of this conflict is incompatible relational expectations. True friends are expected to be unmotivated by benefits that can be used beyond the relationship (e.g., money, status), whereas business partners are, by definition, at least partly motivated by these more “instrumental” concerns. Using a role theory framework and data collected from a survey of 685 direct-selling agents, this article reports evidence that a conflict between friendship and instrumentality can undermine some of the business outcomes that friendship might otherwise foster. It also suggests that this conflict is more severe for friendships that become business relationships than for business relationships that become friendships. Study conclusions do not suggest that friendship is entirely “bad” for business and, instead, propose that friendship's influence can be both positive and negative.
The terms 'co-creation', 'co-production', and 'prosumption' refer to situations in which consumers collaborate with companies or with other consumers to produce things of value. These situations sometimes appear to blur the traditional roles of 'producer' and 'consumer'. Building on Marx's distinction between 'use value' and 'exchange value', we argue that, when consumers perform tasks normally handled by the company, this does not necessarily represent a fundamental change in exchange roles or economic organization. We then argue that, when individuals who are traditionally defined as 'consumers' produce exchange value for companies, this does represent a fundamental change.964 Intersecting Roles of Consumer and Producer
In their study of marketing services relationships, Moorman, Zaltman, and Deshpande (1992) are unable to support a hypothesized link between relational factors (such as clients' trust in their service providers) and clients' use of marketing services. This finding runs counter to relationship marketing theory. To explain their result, Moorman, Zaltman, and Deshpande (1992) suggest that, as a relationship becomes more longterm, it becomes prone to negative influences that dampen the positive impact of relational factors. This study replicates and extends Moorman, Zaltman, and Deshpande's (1992) work by examining relationships between advertising agencies and their clients. The results replicate findings on seven of ten hypotheses proposed in the original article. The authors also extend the original study by supporting the general hypothesis that long-term relationships have a negative impact on service use, which dampens the impact of trust. The results shed light on the mediating role that certain "dark side" constructs play in marketing services relationships.
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