Customer solutions in the capital goods industry: Examining the impact of the buying center

Initiation of buyer–seller relationships: The impact of intangibility, trust and mitigation strategies

“…In contrast to prior research on the topic (Lindberg & Nordin, 2008;Sheth & Sharma, 2008;Stremersch, Wuyts, & Frambach, 2001;Töllner, Blut, & Holzmüller, 2011), this study has explored the impact of offer characteristics, emphasized the importance of trust, and focused on relationship initiation. Instead of studying the procurement of service components (Van der Valk, 2008), the buying process (Lindberg & Nordin, 2008;Töllner et al, 2011) and the impact on sales organizations (Sheth & Sharma, 2008), this study concentrated on the impact of the overall offer characteristics on relationship initiations using the concept of intangibility. In particular, the current study highlights the importance of trust in solution markets, as solutions are inherently risky.…”

The impact of service worker personal resources on relationship quality in business solutions

“…Second, business solutions implementations require high technical proficiency in many cases since they are typical in industries such as IT, telecommunications, construction, engineering and professional services (Biggemann, Kowalkowski, Maley, & Brege, 2013;Li, 2011;Prior, 2013). Third, business solutions generally involve capital projects and are, therefore, high in monetary value while also being high in risk (Scott-Young & Samson, 2008;Töllner, Blut, & Holzmüller, 2011). Overall, the combination of these factors can be stressful for service workers.…”

Procuring Industrial Service Solutions, Exploring Enablers for Co-creating Value

“…To explain customer perceived value, Macdonald et al [12] argue that not just service quality, but also usage process quality and value-in-use should be studied, adding that also relationship quality and network quality contribute. Töllner et al [18] specify three major roles in the buying organization. The first, users, are mainly interested in customization of the solution.…”

“…It has to be emphasized that the activities are not necessarily executed sequentially. Töllner et al [18] complement Aarikka-Stenroos and Jaakkola [11] with valuable parts starting with signaling. For customers in the capital goods industry the initial process prior to choosing a supplier is crucial.…”