Friendship versus Business in Marketing Relationships

Abstract

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 Role of the Distributor Network in the Persistence of Legal and Ethical Problems of Multi-level Marketing Companies

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Chinese relationship management: a qualitative study of banking in New Zealand

“…There is a need, therefore, to establish the value of additional relationships -such as a commercial friendship (Price and Arnould 1999) or a personal relationship with a service employee -to the business relationship associated with the company (Grayson 2007;Rosenbaum 2009). Although social influences are important for the development of loyalty, an understanding of the influence of personal relationships or commercial friendships on service loyalty is largely absent in the ethnic consumer and cross-cultural services literatures (Han, Kwortnik Jr., and Wang 2008;Mavondo and Rodrigo 2001).…”

Motivações da Comunicação Boca a Boca Eletrônica Positiva entre Consumidores no Facebook

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“…107-126, Jan./Fev. 2015 www.anpad.org.br/rac membros, de minar o ideal de partilha e cuidado existente no grupo, conforme abordado nos estudos de Grayson (2007), Kozinets et al (2010) e Pereira (2010.…”