Buyer-Seller Interaction Patterns During Ongoing

This dissertation focuses on the ongoing interactions that take place between buyers and sellers of business services after the contract has been signed. This ongoing interaction is important since services are produced and consumed simultaneously; therefore, both buyer and seller have to make an effort to ensure that the ongoing service exchange is successful. We adopt the Interaction Model originally developed by the Industrial Marketing and Purchasing Group for studying buyer-supplier interactions in marketing and purchasing of industrial goods, and adapt this to business services. As such, we bring forward a classification that differentiates between various business services and the required customer-supplier interface and interaction patterns on the basis of how the service is used / applied in the buying company’s business process. The classification distinguishes four types of service application: components, semi-manufactures, instruments and consumables. In two subsequent series of theory-building case studies, we developed effective patterns of interaction for each of the four service types. As such, the classification of business services has been developed into a typology of effective buyer-seller interaction. We demonstrate that this effective buyer-seller interaction is a necessary condition for successful ongoing service exchange. ERIM The Erasmus Research Institute of Management (ERIM) is the Research School (Onderzoekschool) in the field of management of the Erasmus University Rotterdam. The founding participants of ERIM are RSM Erasmus University and the Erasmus School of Economics. ERIM was founded in 1999 and is officially accredited by the Royal Netherland