Building and sustaining buyer-seller relationships in mature industrial markets

Much of the empirical research in relationship management in industrial markets has taken a snapshot of a relationship at a given time and speculated about "how did it get here?" and "where can it go?", this despite researchers' unanimous agreement that adopting a longitudinal perspective and focusing directly on process models better answers such questions. We use a longitudinal, field investigative approach to study the evolution of three industrial buyer-seller relationships characterized by varying degrees of initial asymmetry that evolved in dramatically different ways over time. Based on our findings, we advance a set of nine propositions that elucidate five important processes that affect the initiation and subsequent evolution of industrial buyer-seller relationships in commodity markets. Moreover, we find that less powerful firms can structure and thrive in equitable relationships with more powerful partners because the effect of imbalances created by initial asymmetries can subsequently be diluted through the development of high levels of inter-organizational commitment and inter-personal trust across the dyad.