When Does Relational Exchange Matters? Social Bond, Trust and Satisfaction

Abstract

The extant literature on business-to-business relationship has shown that trust, relationship duration, and social bond are the key drivers of relationship satisfaction.Notwithstanding, studies on the examination of when and why these variables translate into successful relationship are still scarce and need further exploration. This research investigates the conditions under which trust and social bonds influence satisfaction in a business-to-business relationship.Design/methodology/approach: The data were collected from 159 footwear producers using a structured questionnaire. Four hypotheses were developed and tested using hierarchical multiple regression. Findings:The authors found support for all hypotheses. Social bonds and longevity are crucial in enhancing supplier relationship satisfaction. Likewise, the role of social bonds in inducing supplier satisfaction heightens over time. However, the positive association between exchange partner trustworthiness and supplier satisfaction works well only in high degree of dependence situation. Research limitations/implications:The study was based on the report on monadic data and crosssectional design. Future research should adopt longitudinal design to overcome the shortcomings.Theoretical implications: This study advances the social exchange theory (SET) by elucidating the condition in which social bonds and trust fail to produce relationship satisfaction. Social bonds fail to enhance relationship satisfaction at the beginning of the relationship. Moreover, trust alone cannot be good enough to boost relationship satisfaction in a lose dependence context. Managerial implications:This study acclaimed a relationship-driven approach as the best choice for those firms who aspire to build a good relationship with their exchange partner. Managers should understand how and when to develop a strong social relationship with their trading partners, and recognize the situations in which to deal with honest and fair business partners in an exchange relationship.Originality/Contribution: This is one of the very few studies, which have been conducted to investigate the conditions under which the relational variable influences satisfaction in a businessto-business relationships context. It expanded the boundary of the current literature as it investigated the moderating role of relationship duration and dependence in the relationship between relational constructs and relationship satisfaction.

Comparing public and private organisations in their quest to become a preferred customer of suppliers

“…This feature may also be what is lacking the most in the public case, making it a more decisive factor in explaining the suppliers’ satisfaction variance. This interpretation is supported by recent research that found that, particularly with long-term relations, social bonds increase supplier satisfaction (Shanka and Buvik, 2019). Hence, the short-term nature of relations imposed by tendering laws again put public organisations at a disadvantage.…”

“…A theory that has been successfully used to explain B2B exchange relationships and that has been applied in the attractiveness research and that seems to be promising in explaining the preferential treatment phenomenon and how to mobilise supplier resources for a particular buying firm’s benefit is social exchange theory (Lambe et al , 2001; Schiele et al , 2012; Reichenbachs et al , 2017; Pulles et al , 2019; Shanka and Buvik, 2019). Social exchange theory is based on the idea of expectations leading to exchanges (in the buyer-supplier case, these positive expectations that a supplier has towards the buyer have been termed customer attractiveness), which is then evaluated against a standard (leading to supplier satisfaction, in the positive case of the buyer’s performance matching the standard applied by the supplier).…”

What Drives Importer Opportunism? Learning from a Developing Country in Latin America

“…Shared norms and values, based on previous business experiences and transactions, can lead to a shift in costbenefit analyses that emphasize mutual interests rather than self-interests (Heide & John, 1992;Zaheer & Venkatraman, 1995). This also leads to behaviors in relational exchange that are more likely to be controlled through internal mechanisms, in the form of mutual behavioral expectations or personal relations, rather than incentives, as in market governance, or fiat, as in vertical integration (Dwyer et al, 1987;Joshi & Stump, 1999;Lambe et al, 2001;Morgan & Hunt, 1994;Shanka & Buvik, 2019).…”

The Determinants and Outcomes of Supplier Satisfaction

“…The research analysis showed that the supplier satisfaction brings significant impact on their commitment with the customers. Another study by as in [32] investigated the relationship between the supplier level satisfaction and the commitment of supplier in long run. For this study, they collected data from 159 producers of footwear through structured questionnaire.…”