اندازه گیری ارزش نامشهود در روابط خریدار و فروشنده بنگاه به بنگاه: چشم انداز سرمایه های فکری

The value that resides in a firm's relationships has both tangible and intangible aspects and both need to be developed and managed carefully. Marketing managers need to be able to understand these dimensions of value to manage them and to argue for their share of the firm's resources to effectively develop the value of the firm's relationships. This paper describes a study that adds to current knowledge of relationship value by testing a hypothesized model of the intangible part of the value that is manifested in buyer–seller relationships and by developing a set of scales to measure the hypothesized dimensions. The focus of the research, which synthesizes a conceptual framework from the intellectual capital literature, is on business-to-business situations and on the value of the relationship to the seller, rather than to the buyer. The analysis of data from a survey of relevant managers, using structural equation modeling techniques, gives support to the model and scales.

The relationships a firm has with its customers “contribute to its organizational capital” (Hunt, 1997) and comprise an important part of its shareholder value (Payne, Holt, & Frow, 2000). The value in these relationships therefore needs to be understood and managed carefully. Marketing managers need to be able to understand the dimensions of this value to manage their portfolio of customer relationships effectively (Srivastava, Fahey, & Christensen, 2001) and to argue for a sufficient share of the firm's resources to develop these market-based assets (Srivastava, Shervani, & Fahey, 1998) for competitive advantage (Barney, 1991). Development of scales to measure this value is thus a useful research goal which is supported by calls for the quantification of market-based assets and their value (Srivastava et al., 1998) and for the provision of meaningful “measures, inferences, and calibration” in marketing (Day & Montgomery, 1999). There is therefore a need for research on the measurement of relationship value, which is the subject of the study described in this paper. The specific aim of the study is to develop a model of the intangible part of the value that is manifested in buyer–seller relationships, from the seller's perspective, and a set of scales to measure it. The synthesis of a conceptual framework for relationship value from the intellectual capital literature provides a useful contribution to marketing theory by providing a base for further research and the empirical support from the study strengthens this contribution. The scales developed as measures of the hypothesised dimensions of intangible relationship value will be useful for managers, when further validated, for the assessment of a firm's relationships individually and in comparison to one another. The focus of the research is on business-to-business situations and is on the value of the relationship to the seller, rather than to the buyer. It is not on the “customer value” (e.g., Christopher, 1996 and Ravald & Gronroos, 1996) that is often the focus of relationship value research in marketing. It is specifically aimed at measuring the intangible part of the value in the relationship, rather than the tangible part, because assessment techniques are already available for the tangible part, such as Customer Profitability Analysis (e.g., Bellis-Jones, 1989). Constructs derived from the intellectual capital literature are proposed as scales for this measurement. Based on the same literature, a model of relationship value and its manifestations is also proposed. We continue this paper by establishing that relationships are resources with value, by defining the nature of the research in terms of the issues of value that it considers and then by discussing some ways in which intangible value can be measured. The model of intangible relationship value is proposed together with scales for its measurement. The methodology for, and results from, our empirical testing of these are then described, followed by discussion of the outcomes.

By synthesising a set of measures from the intellectual capital literature into the marketing discipline, this research has suggested a potential way forward for research on the measurement of the value in a seller's relationships with its customers, which are critical resources of the seller. The goodness-of-fit statistics of the estimated model provide a strong suggestion of a relationship value structure, even if the scales that result from the analysis may be specific to the situation in which the data was collected. There is the possibility that this structure can be used for research and for action in other relationship environments and for other relationship aspects. The squared multiple correlation for the future financial performance construct, whilst strong, raises the interesting question of what are the contributions of other factors, such as past financial performance, other network relationships, or the external environment, that might be involved in determining value and hence performance. This will be an interesting topic for further work. Other interesting lines of future research will be to test the association of the intangible value construct with other widely researched relationship constructs, such as commitment, trust, and satisfaction and to investigate further the significance of the differences in the path coefficients between the constructs in the model noted in the Discussion section. The study has, of course, limitations. It was conducted using data from manufacturers in New Zealand and so its generalisation beyond this situation may be limited. It will be interesting to see how the results vary across industries and across countries in further research. It is a study of managers' perceptions and it is cross-sectional rather than longitudinal. Future longitudinal study of the dynamic aspects of these constructs should provide good information for use in managerial strategy development. Another limitation of the study is that it looks only at dyads and only at these from the point of view of the sellers. In principle, the general value structure as tested can be applied to the dyad as seen from the customer's perspective and across networks. That will require the development of modified indicators for the value constructs and provides an additional interesting opportunity for research.