With the increasing expansion of companies into the global markets, Relationship Marketing (RM) has become more significant than ever, drawing to it the interest of scholars and the attention of practitioners. One aspect of the subject, which this research addresses, is the need to understand the nature and importance of relationships across cultures, since such understanding is critical to organizational expansion. The focus of this research is B2B relationship marketing, with cross-cultural marketing as a major component of analysis. Building on and extending relevant cross-cultural theories, this research investigates B2B relationship marketing in a Middle-Eastern telecom company, Saudi Telecom Company (STC), a company that is well placed for providing fertile illustrations of the mechanism of B2B relationship marketing. It is, furthermore, a key company in Saudi Arabia with hundreds of partners worldwide, and its economic importance to the country is second only to SABIC, the state-owned national oil company. Adopting a case study research strategy, the research explores how a growing organization absorbs cultural awareness into its B2B relationships. Data are garnered by interviewing 35 STC managers, 29 STC Small Medium Enterprise SME business partners, and three of STC’s Major Enterprise partners, as well as accessing and analysing secondary data from the company. The findings to date suggest that as the company grows it needs to develop B2B cross-cultural awareness at local and global level. This research extends cross-cultural models which have been developed in a business-to-consumer (B2C) context such as cross-cultural marketing theories proposed by Hall and Hofstede to understand cross-cultural theory in a B2B context. By exploring the role of culture in B2B relationships in the telecom industry in the Middle East in general and Saudi Arabia in particular, in light of a case study conducted on a specific and major company, STC and its global partners, and by investigating and assessing how it conducts its B2B relationships, this research aspires to extend the understanding of cultural awareness in B2B relationship and thereby to make a useful contribution to scholarship.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bl.uk/oai:ethos.bl.uk:600378 |
| Date | January 2013 |
| Creators | Baghdadi, Waheed I. |
| Publisher | University of Bedfordshire |
| Source Sets | Ethos UK |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Source | http://hdl.handle.net/10547/315808 |
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