Essays on supplier responsiveness and buyer firm value - Nyenrode ...

elationship, which in their nature are long term, it would be safe to conclude that it
does play a role within the choice of market orientation as a strategic choice.
Soft measures that gauge the experience of a brand are more meaningful in
buying center contexts where such soft measures have commonly shared meaning
amongst its members. It would be possible to have such commonly shared perceptions
in a culture where there is more cultural homogeneity as compared with
heterogeneity. One of the benefits of having a solid metric to measure against such as
insulation from idiosyncratic risk is that it helps avoid the communications pitfall
which can occur with other soft measures whose value may differ in the perspective
of different team members.
Furthermore, contrary to existing thought our findings offer evidence that
resonance does not exist between non-financial relational outcomes and risk-based
relational outcomes in the United States. However, within The Netherlands we do
find evidence for such a relationship. Therefore, from our evidence the managers
within the United States should look for two independent sets of metrics, whereas in
The Netherlands it may be possible to use idiosyncratic relational risk as a proxy
measure for satisfaction with the relationship. However, even in that case it would be
better to have independent metrics because the magnitude of satisfaction and
idiosyncratic risk may not be the same. The final decision of which metric to use is
for every organization to gauge for itself, depending on which responsive maneuvers
will reduce their customers’ risks and, in turn, increase the value of their brand. Since
every customer is unique and represents a significant volume of the seller’s sales
volume, then our perspective is that the supplier should develop unique responses to
each strategic customer or segment to reduce their risk.
3.4 Recommendations
Our current study is not free from limitations. For example, our research design could
be improved upon. Some researchers have indicated that ethnographies should be
employed to research issues related to culture (Langerak, 2001). The advantage in
their opinion is that organizational culture can be better documented by long-term
observation techniques, such as ethnographies. They consider one of the shortcomings
of questionnaires to be that they are culturally biased. However, to overcome this
shortcoming, we formed a team of two researchers from diverse national cultural
backgrounds while framing the questions. This step enabled us to cross-check
questions for any cultural biases. Some cultural biases may be present in more than
one culture but the process of cross-checking involved checking for biases common to
both cultures, documenting them while framing our questions in the questionnaire,
and taking care to avoid the biases. We do recognize that we may have not eliminated
all cultural biases, but we were able to do so to the best of our ability.
Another limitation is the narrow cultural comparison we have at the moment.
Although the US and The Netherlands are different in some respects, they share
similarities as well. Both are industrialized nations, both are vibrant democracies,
both have capitalist economies, both have a degree of similar occidental culture, and
both nations are internationally competitive economies (Deshpande & Webster,
1989). Some cultural idiosyncrasies do occur, such as acceptance of boasting on job
interviews in the United States and the preference for modesty in job interviews in
The Netherlands, but nevertheless, they both can be considered western cultures.
On the other hand comparison with an Asian culture would have provided a
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