The Importance of Firms' Interaction Capability for Firm-Customer Relationship Effectiveness: A Key Account Management Perspective

摘要

Our research addresses the following research question: How can firms effectively manage their key customer relationships to create competitive advantage? Effectively managing key customer relationships is important for firms' success, but remains a challenging task for key account management. Scholars and managers have long known that relationships between firms and their customers are important and beneficial, and thus, are at the core of business-to-business management (e.g., Anderson and Narus 1990; Cannon and Perreault 1999; Ulaga and Eggert 2006). To date, however, we do not have a full understanding about how to conduct the strategically most important relationships so that they realize their full potential and contribute most effectively to firms' value creation. In a recent study among BtB firms, 85 percent of respondents viewed strategic partnerships as essential to their businesses success - and over 40 percent faced challenges to keep the partnership active and mutually rewarding (The CMO Council 2014). Obviously, firms' vary in their ability to create and preserve the advantages obtained in key customer relationships. We suggest an important firm-specific characteristic termed firms' interaction capability to determine relationship effectiveness, which we define as firms' ability to relate successfully to other organizations.