Relationship strategies over the customer relationship lifecycle the differential effect of individual versus organizational relationships

Relationship Marketing (RM) has been a core philosophy in the marketing discipline for the last 20 years. The foundational premise of RM is strategic management of the overall buyerseller relationship. With the high cost of implementing RM, the mixed performance implications, and the suggested asymmetry in benefits (tilted towards the seller), scholars and firms alike have begun to evaluate contextual and alignment strategies that may help us better understand how to make RM more effective. One such area that has received managerial attention, but limited empirical support, is the differential impact on RM of individual versus organizational relationships. Selling firms want to understand how to reduce the dependence on individual "key contact" boundary spanning employees without impacting the effectiveness of the overall relationship. This dissertation attempts to understand this dilemma by evaluating individual versus organizational relationships across the relationship lifecycle in a business-to-business contex