INTEGRATIVE BUSINESS RELATIONSHIPS IN THE LIGHT OF INCREASING CUSTOMER AND SUPPLIER

As a kind of antipole to the globalisation of markets, companies in a business-to-business context have started to develop closer relationships with their customers as well as with a decreased number of se-lected suppliers. In literature, this development is mirrored for the most part by concepts like relation-ship marketing and supply chain management. In this paper, we narrow the focus to customer and supplier integration which can be seen as two relational mechanisms within the supply chain. We rec-ognized that a high potential of customer and supplier integration is inherent to relationship marketing strategies treated in literature – a potential that has not been discovered and exploited to its full amount so far. Above all, this is true for long-term business relationships and networks, which will be the main focus of our research for this reason. We consider customer and supplier integration to be a standard of relationship marketing. On the basis of a literature review we identify key issues: After the discussion of the themes uncertainty, ‘power versus trust ’ as ways to cope with it, value and innovation potential of integrative relationships, we take a closer look at the actors who are the driving force within busi-ness relationships and networks. As an incitement for future research, we develop a dynamic model as a basis for the deduction of hypotheses. We consider this relevant for revealing and understanding th