A Global PSS Framework for Sustainable B2B Partnership

Sandra S. Graça
Additional contact information
Sandra S. Graça: Collegium of Comparative Cultures, Eckerd College, Saint Petersburg, FL 32711, USA

Sustainability, 2021, vol. 13, issue 6, 1-14

Abstract: Committed Business-to-Business (B2B) relationships are linked to sustainable business partnerships and greater profitability. As competition increases, suppliers must seek to differentiate by shifting the focus of their offerings from the product to services that contribute to create additional value to buyers. This empirical research proposes a product-service system (PSS) framework within the context of a relationship marketing (RM) model tested across a sample of United States (US) and Brazilian buyers. The study examines the impact of value-added benefits on building sustainable B2B partnerships. Results demonstrate that a firm’s servitization strategy that delivers both functional and social benefits fosters greater information exchange and mutual cooperation, which in turn contributes to increase buyer’s trust in, satisfaction with and commitment to a supplier. Despite some noted differences found in the commitment-building process, results show the importance that additional services have on promoting long-term, sustainable B2B partnerships across countries in distinct stages of economic development.

Keywords: functional and social benefits; PSS; relationship marketing; satisfaction; communication; commitment; trust; cooperation; sustainable B2B partnerships (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/13/6/3066/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/13/6/3066/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:13:y:2021:i:6:p:3066-:d:514920

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().