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Peter Turnbull: Professor at UMIST, Manchester, UK
David Ford: University of Bath, UK
Malcolm Cunningham: Professor at UMIST, Manchester, UK
Introduction
The basis of this paper is the series of studies which have been carried out over the past 20 years into the nature of buyer-seller relationships by the International Marketing and Purchasing (IMP) Group and a number of other contributors to the growing theoretical and empirical research base in business-to-business marketing. The themes of interaction, relationships and networks encapsulate the major research thrusts of this group and underlie much of the contemporary academic research in Europe. This paper addresses these themes, which represent the major phases of challenging conceptual and empirical research with which the IMP Group have been concerned since its inception in 1976. The aim of this paper is to show the development process of the IMP research and to integrate some of its various themes and findings.
By 1974, early fragmented research into industrial markets in the USA and Europe had established that purchasing was a multi-person activity, that customers were often reluctant to change their sources of supply and that there was a surprising degree of stability and durability in their dealings with many of their suppliers. Risk reduction and satisfying behavior were evident and even large, powerful customers frequently sought cooperation with suppliers rather than brutally and unilaterally exercising their purchasing power in the market. Such cooperative behavior developed through relationships often entailed modification of systems and adaptations of products and service by both seller and buyer.
In Europe, during the 1970s, various explanations for these phenomena were offered, drawing on research conducted in Sweden, Britain and France (Hakansson and Wootz, 1979). It was apparent that increasing market concentration resulting in a few powerful players gave a more restricted choice of partners, and the large increment of change of partner became of increasing importance. Risk perception and risk reducing strategies were clearly possible explanations. High costs of change (switching costs) and strong source loyalty and inertia were observed in studies of organizational buying behavior (Cunningham, 1986; Hakansson and Wootz, 1979). It also became clear that buyers take an active role in seeking out suppliers and influencing the interaction.
By 1975 these studies had led to a recognition that supplier-customer...