Do Personal Interaction and E-Commerce Constitute a Contradiction in Business-to-Business Settings?

摘要

According to relationship marketing(RM)research, strong interorganizational relationships are essential as they increase sales, profits, and share(Crosby, Evans, and Cowles, 1990;Morgan and Hunt, 1994;Palmatier, Dant, Grewal, and Evans, 2006;Palmatier, Houston, Dant, and Grewal, 2013).For the development of such interorganizational relationships, personal interaction between salesperson and buyer is crucial.Thus, business-to-business(B2B)firms invest considerable resources in relational selling strategies, which are based on buyer-seller interaction(Arli, Bauer, and Palmatier, 2017;Clopton, 1984;Palmatier, Scheer, Evans, and Arnold, 2008).Especially sales strategies for key accounts, i.e.strategically important customers(McDonald, Millman, and Rogers, 1997;Pardo, 1999;Piercy and Lane, 2006;Zupancic, 2008)imply increased service or customization levels, for instance(e.g.Homburg, Workman, and Jensen, 2002).Recently, however, more and more B2B firms develop e-commerce solutions, which render personal interaction in sales obsolete.By 2020, personal interaction is predicted to be superfluous for 85% of transactions(Baumgartner, Hatami, and Valdivieso, 2016).