Research and practitioners alike have underscored the importance of customer value creation in marketing. For any marketing practice to be successful, it must first create value for customers. This is also true for the practice of relationship marketing, which is enjoying popularity among organizational marketers. However, there has been a lack of research done on the predictive effects of relationship marketing constructs in relation to buyer perceived value in organizational marketing. In other words, we still know little about the mechanism through which a good relationship enhances customer perceived value. The primary purpose of this study is to conceptually develop and empirically test a model that explains how the quality of a buyer-supplier relationship affects the buyer's value judgment in an organizational purchasing context. In the study, relationship quality is defined as comprising three different but mutually reinforcing dimensions: mutual trust, mutual commitment, and interdependence. Perceived value is conceptualized as an overall assessment of the utility of an offering based on the benefits and costs of accepting an offering. The conceptual model specifies the several routes through which relationship quality impacts buyer perceived value. First, a good relationship increases relationship benefits and reduces relationship costs, which in turn influences customer value perception - the higher the relationship benefits (and lower relationship costs), the higher the customer perceived value. Second, a good relationship reduces decision-making uncertainty. Lower decision-making uncertainty is hypothesized to increase the effects of perceived purchase episode benefits and perceived purchase episode costs on perceived value. The model was generally confirmed by an empirical test based on data collected from a national sample of purchasing managers in the United States. / Ph. D.

Purpose: The purpose is to investigate and analyse the impact of intra-organizational purchasing synergy on periodic price adjustment (PPA) process. Specifically, paper provides a view on how  purchasing process synergy through an operational IT platform can increase process reengineering opportunities within PPA.  Methodology: So, to fulfil the purpose of the research, the in-depth case study approach is chosen as a strategy that goes along with exploratory nature of the study, aimed at gaining rich insights in the context in which the phenomenon happens. Findings: The findings emphasize the importance of global process standardization and balanced governance among regional affiliates in successful implementation of PPA process synergy. We also identify a set of specific process reengineering needs  in PPA such as company wide information sharing,  standardization of part specifications and cost bases, and joint world-wide cost reduction activity within global buyer community (BGC). Then it is observed that all these process reengineering initiatives will not be possible without solid and flexible IT infrastructure  to improve buyer productivity and support their further development.   Research limitations/implications: Primarily, this study was conducted on single in-depth case study which makes it difficult to completely generalize the findings. Next, there are many factors impacting intra-organizational pricing processes besides global synergy projects. In fact, regional and organizational contexts are of high importance, which are addressed but not analysed in detail in the current study.   Practical implications: Together, the findings contribute to our understanding of the step-by-step pricing activity from industrial customer perspective and how buyers can improve cost competitiveness through various tangible and commercial part cost reduction activities.   Originality/value: Current study has addressed the pricing process from industrial customer perspective. It has two main theoretical contributions: (1) Detailed step-by-step description of PPA process between OEMs and their suppliers happening after SOP; and (2) groundwork for implementation guidance on intra-organizational price revision process synergy.