Relationship promoters - Driving forces for successful customer relationships

The role of marketing-oriented boundary spanners in developing and maintaining successful business relationships is an area of increasing interest in both academic research and managerial practice. Drawing upon a database of 191 supplier-customer relationships, I show in this study that relationship promoters are powerful predictors of relationship effectiveness. Relationship promoters are persons who identify appropriate partners of different organizations, bring them together, and facilitate the dialogue and exchange processes between them. Relationship promoters support interactive learning processes and solve interorganizational conflicts. Furthermore, they fulfill an important social task, contributing to overcome existing distances between the partner firms, as well as developing an understanding for the situation and objectives of the respective partner. The findings also suggest that relationship promoters are especially important for the success of international supplier-customer relationships and that customer orientation and innovation orientation strengthen the positive commitment of the key persons in relationships. The article concludes with a discussion of the results and a number of theoretical and managerial implications following from these results. (C) 1999 Elsevier Science Inc. All rights reserved.