The Impact of Internet Use on Inter-Firm Relationships in Australian Service Industries

Abstract

The impact of the internet on inter-firm relationships has received little attention in the academic literature. This theory building research develops a conceptual framework about internet-facilitated relationships based on the literature and research findings from convergent interviews. The convergent interviews were conducted with CEOs and/or marketing managers of 10 Australian service companies. Results show that the internet does not appear to hinder inter-firm relationships as the internet is not being used at the expense of more traditional and personal forms of communication and has little impact on the level of trust in internet exchange partners and the dependence they have on one another at this relatively early stage of adoption. Rather, internet use is thought to be linked with improved business performance and satisfaction with the exchange partner's performance. The findings of this research add to the body of marketing knowledge and provide guidelines for managers to more effectively use the internet in managing their relationships with other businesses. Relationship MarketingThis research investigates the intersection of relationship marketing and internet marketing. Relationship marketing was first investigated in the 1970s. Driven by global competition, relationship marketing was noticed when many businesses learnt that they must collaborate to compete (Palmer 1997(Palmer , 2000. However, it was not until the late 1970s and the 1980s that the term "relationship marketing" emerged in the marketing literature. Simultaneously but independently, researchers in the United States (for example, Wilson, 1976;Jackson, 1985) and Europe (for example, Gummesson, 1987;Hakansson, 1982;Johanson and Mattsson, 1987) began to look beyond simple dyadic transactions and began to explore the notion of dyadic relationships (Healy, Hastings, Brown and Gardiner, 2001). The two major theoretical streams of relationship marketing were the Nordic school focusing on services marketing, and the Network Approach to industrial marketing developed by the international marketing and purchasing group (IMP) (Gummesson, Lehtinen and Gronroos, 1997).Since then relationship marketing has evolved over the last two decades with the emphasis shifting with different approaches. One of the earliest approaches to relationship marketing research was social exchange theory, which placed importance on interactive marketing activities (Anderson and Narus, 1984;Araujo and Easton, 1996;Sheth and Parvatiyar, 1995). Other approaches have been grounded in inter-organisation theory (Van de Ven, 1992) and industrial network theory (Mattson, 1985). Some scholars claim that only people create relationships, while others believe that customised and personalised technologically delivered services may strengthen longterm relationships (for example, Thirkell, 1997;Schultz, 1997). For example, a recent approach to relationship marketing is predicated on the interactivity of the internet and the opportunities this provides for relationship market...

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