Antecedents to Loyalty in Agency-Client Relations: The Impact of Long-Term Versus Short-Term Relationships

Abstract

Both marketing theory and practice have experienced a paradigm shift toward relationship marketing, a concept that encompasses more collaborative, long-term relationships between supplier and client (Morgan and Hunt 1994). Collaboration is the process by which partners adopt a high level of purposeful cooperation to maintain a trading relationship over time. The successful relationships appear to be those where an overall balance of benefits is realized by member companies. Marginal success is often a result of the buyer and/or supplier abusing power or lacking a commitment to preserve the relationship (Nowak 1997).