Should I stay or should I go? Customers’ reactions faced with the deterioration of a business relationship

Abstract

Purpose – This paper aims to develop a framework helping managers to understand reactions, adopting the supplier perspective, and starting from the idea that the outcome of the degradation process is mainly determined by customers’ reactions. Inter-organisational relationships are sometimes subject to degradation. When incidents arise, and relationship attractiveness decreases, its evolution becomes uncertain. Design/methodology/approach – A case study carried out with a large French industrial company (FabIndus) specialised in the production of supplies destined to a large variety of business sectors. In all, 26 semi-structured interviews were conducted with staff members of FabIndus and clients’ representatives identified as having recently been confronted with deterioration in their relationship. Findings – The paper finds that customers’ reactions vary according to the nature of the business relationship and the customer commitment when degradation begins. Using two types of commitment and the exit–voice–loyalty–neglect model, it is possible to identify four types of reactions in the situation of the deterioration of a relationship. For each one of the reactions, the paper defines the response strategy that suppliers may take on. Originality/value – The paper underlines the importance of a segmented view of business behaviours faced with the deterioration of a relationship. This can be helpful to elaborate differentiated response strategies, to avoid mutual misunderstandings.

Examining the impact of locus and justice perception on B2B service recovery

“…In addition to attribution theory, the theoretical foundation of this study is based on the premises of social exchange theory (Emerson, 1976), justice theory (Homans, 1961) and equity theory (Adams, 1965). Unfair business treatments cause harm to the quality of B2B relations by diminishing the level of trust and eventually deteriorating the relationship (Vidal et al, 2016). Justice in recovery refers to the degree to which customers feel an organization treated them fairly in the complaint and recovery process (Maxham and Netemeyer, 2002a), and thus, it is a relevant framework for explaining the perception of recovery efforts (Blodgett et al, 1997;Tax et al, 1998;Mayombo, 2014).…”

“…In the interorganizational view, distributive justice points to the perceived fairness of how rewards, benefits or resources are allocated within the relationship (Deutsch, 1975;Martínez Tur et al, 2006;Normann et al, 2017). As incidents such as delays and product quality failures trigger the calculative aspects of relations by decreasing the cost/benefit ratios in business relations (Vidal et al, 2016), distributive justice is crucial in compensation and maintaining the equity logic. In B2B studies, distributive justice is both the aim and the cause for successful implementation of B2B relationships (Brown et al, 2006;Griffith et al, 2006;Hoppner et al, 2014).…”

“…Responses to failures can be fundamental to understand whether a business relationship will deteriorate or not (Vidal et al, 2016). As failures in B2B often involve core services and have significant impacts on transactions, a B2B service provider, therefore, needs to exert more effort to convert that negative state into a positive one (Grönroos, 1988).…”

Friends or strangers? Attempts at reactivating buyer–supplier relationships

“…What happen to these former tangible and intangible investments in the relationship at the time of a breakup, as well as after a breakup, affects the possibilities to re-join again. While initially described as a relationship conclusion, in more recent research (Mainela, 2007;Ryan and Tähtinen, 2012;Vidal et al, 2016) the ending has been recognized as a process that one needs to study from a dyadic perspective. This process has been defined by Halinen and Tähtinen (2002, p. 171) as one that "disconnects the former companies from each other by cutting the activity links, the resource ties and the actor bonds that have kept them together."…”

Involving customers in innovation: knowledgeability and agency as process variables

“…Some prior research has recognized the role of the customer in business-to-business innovation processes (Martin, Horne and Schultz, 1999) and identified customer knowledgeability as a key issue (Vidal, Fenneteau, and Paché, 2016) but does not place this within a network context. Other research has examined the customer as part of an innovation network (Johnston, Peters and Gassenheimer, 2006) and the customer as a co-producer of value (Blazevic and Lievens, 2008), but does not examine the impact this relationship has on managerial practices and firm processes.…”