The impact of managing business partners supported by Web-based technologies on inter-organisational relationships : an empirical study from partners' perspective within the ICT industry

Abstract

Due to increasing globalisation and intense international competition, companies have begun to realise that supplier-partner relationships are becoming a key force necessary in business-to-business (B2B) distribution channels to achieve significant monetary and non-monetary benefits. However, the tasks required of implementing a successful B2B distribution strategy for a supplier and its partners face greater challenges, and are more complex now than just a few years ago. One of the methods used to overcome the challenges inherent to the supplier-partner relationship is by creating and adopting new solutions, often referred to as Partner Relationship Management (PRM), in order to provide an entire suite of web-based software solutions that are specifically targeted toward building closer and more productive supplier-partner relationships (Mirani, Moore, and Weber, 2001). In fact, substantial capital is invested in web-based technologies to complement existing traditional approaches for achieving higher business performance and quality relationships. However, this phenomenon raises the following questions: Does the result of this investment alongside traditional approaches have significant impact on business performance? Do these two approaches have significant impact on high quality relationships? If so, what are their driving factors? Therefore, this research addresses these questions in the context of supplier-partner relationships within the Information and Communication Technology (ICT) industry. Based on a sample of 196 partner organisations, we carry out an empirical study and document the association between both driving factors and indicators of high quality relationships. We find support for the hypotheses posed, such as the impact of certification on relationship setting, marketing support, technical support, and relationship commitment. We also find support for the impact of relationship setting on marketing support, relationship management, technical support, non-economic satisfaction and relationship quality. Furthermore, the results of this research indicate that marketing support and relationship management have significant impact on economic satisfaction, and that relationship management has significant impact no economic satisfaction, while technical support has significant impact on customer satisfaction. Finally, we find support for significant relationships between economic satisfaction and relationship commitment, non-economic satisfaction and relationship quality, customer satisfaction and relationship commitment, as well as relationship quality and relationship commitment. Discussion of theoretical and managerial implications, research limitations and further investigation, as well as final conclusions, are also provided