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

4. A RELATIONAL APPROACH TO VALUE CREATIONBuilding up a suitable theoretical framework - the proper basic assumptions for a study - isvital for the success of any research endeavor. Due to the specific initial interest that I had infinding out what is valued in a buyer-seller relationship, and due to my background inindustrial buyer-seller relationships, as well as the pre-understanding and the access that Ihad to certain industrial companies, the logical starting point for finding a theoreticalframework for my study was the literature on industrial marketing and buyer-sellerrelationships.As I started reading about industrial markets and how companies on industrial marketsbehave, I found the studies and the literature created within the IMP Group particularlyrelevant, and corresponding to what I had seen in industry. The ideas that triggered myinterest in the IMP literature was the notion of business relationships on industrial marketsbeing long-term, and being characterized by two active parties interacting over time in orderto create a desired output. I also found the notion of companies not striving to maximize ineach transaction, but instead to work for the long-term through relationships on industrialmarkets an appealing thought.As the plan for my study developed I got more involved in the IMP literature andstarted participating in conferences and workshops inspired by IMP. The research processled me into the world of relationships and networks and gradually became the basis of mytheoretical understanding of industrial marketing. Consequently theoretical framework i.e.the basic assumptions that my study relies on are brought from the IMP tradition. This canbe seen both as a limitation and as an opportunity. The opportunity is that I can do a focusedstudy and make a theoretical contribution to a specific theoretical school of thought. Theobvious limitation is that I might not contribute to alternative schools of thought withinbusiness marketing.The theoretical chapter starts out with laying the groundwork, explaining the basicunderlying ideas of the open systems view on organizations, inter-organizational studies,and theory of resource dependency; this is followed by focusing on the IMP literature andmore specifically Interaction Approach. Thereafter I introduce the concept of value cocreationand provide the conceptual arguments for its use in the context of studyingindustrial buyer-seller relationships. Next I turn to discussing interdependence and howinterdependence correlates with value co-creation potential. After, I go further intodiscussing different types of interdependence and different types of value creatingprocesses, and how different types of relationships (activity systems) apply different typesof value creating processes by exploiting different types of interdependencies in order to cocreatevalue in the form of increased efficiency or more effective use of resources.61