Value Co-Creation in Industrial Buyer-Seller Partnerships ... - Doria

6.7.1 Comments: Buyer ManagementA strong message from the Buyer management was that the cultures of the twoorganizations are different and that this difference in mindset makes it difficult to worktogether. It was said that the Seller does not have an understanding of the business that theBuyer operates in, that they do not quite understand the concerns that a cruise company haswith 60 000 passengers onboard the ships each night– people that the Buyer is responsiblefor and still the management have to be able to get a good night’ s sleep.It was also said that the overall business visions of the two companies are different, theSeller sells mechanical parts and the Buyer is in the business of creating vacationexperiences for tourists. The Buyer management felt that being in the United States poseseven more pressure and personal responsibility on management, something that the Sellerhas not quite understood.“ We sell a vacation experience to two and a half million Americans. We talk abouttheir vacation, their vacation culture. So we (Buyer and Seller) are two extremeopposites” (Interview: Buyer 9).It was also stated that there is a lack of trust and respect between the two companies,resulting in lack of open dialogue.” … if I were to mention one thing that this cooperation fails on, that is trust andrespect, lack of trust and respect. I think that it is there. There is no trust and respectand it goes quite deep… it is not a question about me. I have wanted to do this workand I am a little patriotic in this case. I think that a product of this particular origin ,that this should work, and it did in the company where I worked previously, thisworked automatically without anything… We have done a lot to make this work, butnow I see it as a big challenge. And quite a few of my colleagues, as late as yesterdaysomeone asked me why we don’t terminate this, that this is hopeless. Why should wekeep doing this with the Seller? That it is just a waste of energy to try to work closer” .(Interview: Buyer 9)Another aspect that the Buyer management saw as a problem was that there was little proactivityin the Seller’ s communication, especially in the case of technical problems. Ingeneral it was felt that this all boils down to the problem of the Seller not having a longtermfocus in their operations, that they do not realize that the things that the Buyer areasking and hoping for are all related to a relationship for the long-term.The positive comments from the Buyer management were first of all that the Seller hasthe best product on the market and that this is the main reason for using the Seller diesel.120