Assessing Value From Business-to-Business Services Relationships: Temporality, Tangibility, Temperament, and Trade-Offs

Abstract

Theoretical contributions exploring service value in business-to-business (B2B) settings have significantly lagged those that consider goods markets and business-to-consumer (B2C) contexts. To address this gap, this article focuses on the interfirm relationship as the fulcrum through which service value is created and exchanged. Specifically, we analyze how relationship value is assessed by actors and their organizations over the lifetimes of service engagements. Through in-depth interviews with 38 executives representing customer and provider firms, we study three cases with durations ranging between 9 and 11 years. We develop a model demonstrating value assessment to be a dynamic, socially constructed, and multilevel phenomenon, in which structured institutional bodies and unstructured collectives within firms display different priorities in their assessments. The model also demonstrates the critical role of relationship leaders in influencing these positions and negotiating consensus. Our analysis reveals value assessments to be both a sustenance for, and an output from, B2B service relationships. We contribute to knowledge and theory of relationship value and offer managerial actions to promote improvement in assessments of this value in B2B services settings.