Relationship marketing—establishing, developing, and maintaining successful relational exchanges—constitutes a major shift in marketing theory and practice. After conceptualizing relationship marke...

The Commitment-Trust Theory of Relationship Marketing

This paper argues for the recognition of important experiential aspects of consumption. Specifically, a general framework is constructed to represent typical consumer behavior variables. Based on this paradigm, the prevailing information processing model is contrasted with an experiential view that focuses on the symbolic, hedonic, and esthetic nature of consumption. This view regards the consumption experience as a phenomenon directed toward the pursuit of fantasies, feelings, and fun.

The Experiential Aspects of Consumption: Consumer Fantasies, Feelings, and Fun

This article builds a theoretical framework to help explain governance patterns in global value chains It draws on three streams of literature ‐ transaction costs economics, production networks, and technological capability and firm-level learning ‐ to identify three variables that play a large role in determining how global value chains are governed and change These are: (1) the complexity of transactions, (2) the ability to codify transactions, and (3) the capabilities in the supply-base The theory generates five types of global value chain governance ‐ hierarchy, captive, relational, modular, and market ‐ which range from high to low levels of explicit coordination and power asymmetry The article highlights the dynamic and overlapping nature of global value chain governance through four brief industry case studies: bicycles, apparel, horticulture and electronics

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The governance of global value chains

Global competition highlights asymmetries in the skill endowments of firms. Collaboration may provide an opportunity for one partner to internalize the skills of the other, and thus improve its position both within and without the alliance. Detailed analysis of nine international alliances yielded a fine-grained understanding of the determinants of interpartner learning. The study suggests that not all partners are equally adept at learning; that asymmetries in learning alter the relative bargaining power of partners; that stability and longevity may be inappropriate metrics of partnership success; that partners may have competitive, as well as collaborative aims, vis-a-vis each other; and that process may be more important than structure in determining learning outcomes.

https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/2486643.pdf

Competition for competence and interpartner learning within international strategic alliances

The Uppsala internationalization process model is revisited in the light of changes in business practices and theoretical advances that have been made since 1977. Now the business environment is viewed as a web of relationships, a network, rather than as a neoclassical market with many independent suppliers and customers. Outsidership, in relation to the relevant network, more than psychic distance, is the root of uncertainty. The change mechanisms in the revised model are essentially the same as those in the original version, although we add trust-building and knowledge creation, the latter to recognize the fact that new knowledge is developed in relationships.

/pdf/the-uppsala-internationalization-process-model-revisited-2ck5k4nfor.pdf

The Uppsala Internationalization Process Model Revisited: From Liability of Foreignness to Liability of Outsidership

The information seekers

The thesis that market information search activity and data source awareness are highly unevenly distributed among various groups of consumers is strongly supported by data from a large Norwegian s...

Concentration of Information Power Among Consumers

Gonzales-Arce's book describes step-by-step how a personal interview survey of 14,309 consumers was made in 30 urban areas of Mexico and what adaptations of existing techniques were required to fit the Mexican environment. The specialist will enjoy the methodology discussion, which is filled with all the right buzz words: two-stage area sampling, Likerttype scaling techniques, blindfold product testing, group interviews, analysis of variance, multiple discriminants, cluster and chi-square analysis, and so

The information seekers;: An international study of consumer information and advertising image

Willingness of American industrial buyers to source internationally

Publisher Summary This chapter highlights that in 1982, Professors Gerald D Sentell and Hans B Thorelli wrote a book entitled Consumer Emancipation and Economic Development: The Case of Thailand. The book reported on ground-breaking research on consumers in Thailand and was aimed at providing base-line information on the socio-economic environment and relevant issues and problems facing consumers within the Kingdom at that time. The chapter is aimed at updating the summary of the original book. The demographic profile of Thailand has changed considerably over the last 30 years. The population has continued to grow at a healthy rate annually and exceeded 63 million in 2003, with an unknown number of people, probably several millions, unregistered either because of being illegal migrant workers or stateless hill tribes people. In the 1970s, the Kingdom was approximately on par with other mainland Southeast Asian nations economically, nations that have now been left far behind as Thais have embraced democracy and market forces with great enthusiasm. The gap between Thailand and the developed countries of the OECD still certainly exists but it has narrowed considerably in the meantime. Changes in many ways only partially and selectively affect people as there are still far too many who are vulnerable to such ills as human trafficking, exploitation, and total poverty. Nevertheless, there are generations of young people now able to aspire toward opportunities that were never available to their forebears.

Hans B. Thorelli

Papers

The information seekers

Concentration of Information Power Among Consumers

The information seekers;: An international study of consumer information and advertising image

Willingness of American industrial buyers to source internationally

Consumer emancipation and economic development : the case of Thailand