ایجاد و اختصاص ارزش در روابط مشترک

Business relationships provide means for creating and appropriating superior value in the marketplace. To date, research pertains almost exclusively to the value after relationship creation and sharing among exchange partners. Consequently, the interaction between value creation and value appropriation remains relatively unknown in collaborative relationships. Drawing on equity theory, this study proposes a conceptual model that positions value creation and value appropriation as focal variables within the nomological net of business relationships. Data collected from industrial customer–supplier projects reveal that value appropriation is the strongest driver of project satisfaction. Customer firms perceive value creation as positive only if they appropriate a larger slice of the bigger value pie. Information exchange moderates customer firms' evaluations of value creation and appropriation efforts. In contrast to the highly competitive nature at the project level, embedding the supplier project in an ongoing sourcing relationship reveals cooperative elements in the customer–supplier interaction. Greater relational satisfaction favors less aggressive value appropriation efforts. These insights help bridge the gap between managerial metrics that focus on successful value appropriation and academic models that attend to variables that capture the quality of ongoing relationships.

Over the past two decades, relationship marketing became the dominant perspective in academic marketing literature (Palmatier, 2008). Scholars advance understanding of the drivers, mediators, and performance outcomes of business relationships on the basis of both conceptual and empirical perspectives. In particular, widespread research attention centers on relationship quality as a key mediating variable (Kumar et al., 1995, Morgan and Hunt, 1994 and Palmatier et al., 2006). As a composite concept, relationship quality summarizes “the diverse interaction characteristics required to create a high-caliber relational bond” (Palmatier, 2008, p. 22) by encompassing variables such as satisfaction, trust, and commitment. As a mediating variable, relationship quality provides a means to an end. Companies do not build strong bonds with their customers and suppliers for their own sake. Rather, they adopt exchange designs that offer the best performance prospects (Carson et al., 1999). Companies prefer relational exchanges to arm's-length interactions when those exchanges help create and appropriate more business value in marketplaces (Ghosh and John, 1999). For example, North American car manufacturers historically relied on an arm's-length model of supplier management, characterized by minimal commitment or dependence and the exploitation of bargaining power. The focus was clearly on value appropriation, frequently at the expense of the suppliers. Competitive pressure from Japanese auto manufacturers forced U.S. firms to reconsider this practice and adopt a partnership model, as firms like Toyota, Honda, or Nissan practiced in Japan and their North American transplants. Chrysler took the lead in adopting collaborative relationships with suppliers, which prompted suppliers to expend more relationship-specific investments, share knowledge more openly, and better coordinate independent product development and manufacturing tasks. In 1998 alone, Chrysler and its suppliers removed more than $2 billion in costs from the supply chain (Hartley et al., 2002) through the SCORE program, which relies on collaborative relationships. Chrysler and its suppliers shared the benefits (Dyer, 1996). The Chrysler example illustrates that collaborative relationships can help create and appropriate superior value in business markets. With such a background, empirical research provided little insight into the interaction between value creation and value appropriation in collaborative relationships though. A growing body of literature demonstrates the value creation potential of collaborative relationships (Möller and Törrönen, 2003 and Walter et al., 2003), yet the shared “value pie” remains underresearched (Jap, 2001). Empirical researchers virtually ignore the interplay between value creation and value appropriation at the individual business relationship level (Fang et al., 2008). Because “value creation and value sharing are the raison d'être of collaborative customer–supplier relationships” ( Anderson, 1995, p. 348), this omission represents a major gap in the relationship marketing research agenda. From a conceptual perspective, value creation and value appropriation represent two sides of the same coin. Value creation entails the total net value (i.e., total outcomes minus total inputs) created in a collaborative effort among exchange partners. Value appropriation depicts the net value that a focal firm claims successfully. Value creation is a win–win scenario; value appropriation means that a larger value slice for one party diminishes the remaining slice for the other partner. Previous relationship marketing scholars researched perceived value only after its creation and sharing among exchange partners (Lindgreen and Wynstra, 2005, Menon et al., 2005 and Ulaga and Eggert, 2006), but this research perspective cannot reveal the underlying sources of value perceptions. That is, a focal firm might achieve superior value because of superior value creation among the exchange partners, superior appropriation of the value pie, or a combination thereof. Understanding how business relationships facilitate value is important to marketing managers and academicians alike. From a practitioner's point of view, value creation and value appropriation enable the profitable management of business relationships. For example, many industrial suppliers now provide value-added services to customers, yet many fail to extract their fair share of the augmented value pie (Reinartz and Ulaga, 2008). From an academic perspective, research into value creation and appropriation represents an essential step toward crafting a value-based perspective of relationship marketing. If value creation and value appropriation represent the raison d'être of collaborative customer–supplier relationships, then a thorough understanding of the interaction between these value constituents is critical. To shed light on the creation and appropriation of value in collaborative relationships, this study takes the following steps: The next section introduces equity theory as a framework for understanding the interaction between value creation and value appropriation in collaborative relationships. Against this theoretical background, the authors offer a conceptual model and discuss the hypotheses. After the description of the empirical study, the results and findings appear. Finally, the article concludes with some limitations of the study and further research opportunities.