FORCES IMPINGING ON LONG-TERM BUSINESS-TO-BUSINESS RELATIONSHIPS IN THE UNITED-STATES - AN HISTORICAL-PERSPECTIVE

The authors examine the histories of four business-to-business relatio nships in the United States: advertising agencies and clients, textile agents and mills, the Pullman Car Company and railroads, and independ ent department stores and their resident buying offices. The authors' goals are to gain perspective on how marketing relationships evolve ov er time and identify those factors that foster closer relationships an d those that attenuate relationships. The results show that economic g rowth, information asymmetry partially prompted by geographic dispersi on, entry barriers in one or both industries, dependence asymmetry, an d economies of scale are important environmental forces that impinge o n relationship development in all four cases.