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

partnership with the Seller, the assessment of the trade-off seems to be positive, since theyare continuing the partnership and pursuing the work of developing it further.The Buyer is interested in continuing the work within the frames of a partnership thatthey have actively been creating and shaping - a partnership that does not encompass servicefrom the Seller, but instead other resources that the Seller possesses. The resources that theBuyer need are related to optimal operations of the fleet i.e. special technical skills andknow-how. They also need the Seller’ s resources in the form of spare parts, both thephysical parts and the knowledge that the Seller possesses about the parts in relation to theBuyer’ s fleet. Also the infrastructure that the Seller has in place for repairing, handling, anddelivering parts worldwide can be utilized as a shared resource, a possibility that the partiesstarted to investigate at the second partnership seminar.Considering the partnership from the Seller’ s side, the general observations that can bemade about the benefit-sacrifice assessment are that: for the Seller the most obvious reasonsfor pursuing a partnership are securing of future business, learning new ways of workingboth technically and organizationally, and being “ the supplier” for the cruise industry. Thereseems to be a strong emphasis on the benefit of learning in the partnership. It is seen aspositive that the Seller is being forced to learn, develop, and adapt to the Buyer’ s needs. TheBuyer is a forerunner in the market and is considered a demanding customer; therefore it isboth useful and advantageous for the Seller to be associated with a prestigious company asthe Buyer. The cruise industry is an expanding industry with a considerable potential forfuture business.The assessment of the benefits and sacrifices of involvement with a certain partner isan assessment that has to be made in order for a relationship to exist and be able to develop.This assessment has to be made by someone, and in the case of industrial companies thecompany management are the most likely persons to make the strategic decision on whetherto enter and pursue a high-involvement relationship or not. The managers obviously do notpossess all the information that would be needed to make a perfectly informed decision, butin addition to facts and previous experience have to rely on imperfect information, tacitknowledge, and some degree of intuition. This can be compared to an investment decisionor a decision to commit to a marriage – an investment decision as well as a decision to getmarried is always based on imperfect information, together with a fair share of positive faithin the future. This suggests that there has to be a strong belief in the future outcomes of thepartnership - a belief that is often based to a great extent on other things than pure facts andfigures.I would like to return to the discussion on value and price for a moment, because valueis quite often seen as the price or the money that one of the parties receives. In the followingsection I discuss price as both a benefit and a sacrifice and conclude with some remarks on151