 Business to business relationships: the paradox of network constraints?David Ballantyne and John Williams Australasian marketing journal, 2008, vol. 16, issue 1, 95-107 Abstract: The marketing significance of consumer and business relationships was reclaimed in the 1990s when relationship marketing came into its own as a field of marketing inquiry. This article contributes to the current debate about the scope of relationship marketing and especially the meaning of network relationships. This question is discussed in a business to business context, using the network approach of the Industrial Marketing and Purchasing (IMP) group as a lens. We critique three relationship ‘paradoxes’ (Håkansson and Ford, 2002) which appear to place limits on managerial action in networks. These paradoxes are considered from alternative viewpoints in order to attempt a resolution to the logical conundrum they present. We conclude that Håkansson and Ford's paradoxes indeed signal a range of constraints on managerial independence but the situation is far from paradoxical. We offer suggestions for cognitive mapping of relationships within the knowable network at the level of the firm and call for an ontological shift in understanding firm-level strategies in the network context. Keywords: Cognitive mapping; IMP; network paradox; relationship marketing (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:aumajo:v:16:y:2008:i:1:p:95-107 DOI: 10.1016/S1441-3582(08)70008-9 Access Statistics for this article Australasian marketing journal is currently edited by Roger Marshall More articles in Australasian marketing journal from Elsevier |
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