Factors driving relationship commitment in B2B services: The role of national culture, value, trust and bonds

Retaining buyers through relationship building and value creation remains a topic of great concern to business-to-business (B2B) service suppliers as competition intensifies from globalization, technology developments and a service oriented economy. Concepts such as relationship commitment have been studied as a way of capturing the many relational factors that predict a supplier's long-term profit potential with a buyer. Despite its prevalence in the literature, however, little progress has been made in conceptualizing and testing frameworks that can effectively explain relationship commitment in a B2B services setting. Traditional models either lack a solid nomological foundation or they fail to account for situational influences such as country origin and degree of buyer dependency.; This dissertation empirically examines determinants of long-term relationship commitment from 202 buyers of after sales services. Results of the research validated a number of hypothesized influences on commitment. Tests of the integrated framework across situational influences further demonstrated that commitment determinants are indeed distinct across country cultures and degree of buyer dependency.; From the baseline framework, mediating influences were introduced to improve the explanatory power of the proposed nomological structure. In addition, scale development from in-depth interviews and factor analysis supported the addition of a new constructs (goal congruence and service line breadth) to the field of relationship marketing. Finally, the use of structural equation modeling permitted the simultaneous measurement of commitment antecedents and mediating influences from goodness-of-fit indices that confirmed the model's explanatory power and robustness.; Overall, the model (1) empirically validates current theories of buyer commitment building in a B2B services setting; (2) demonstrates cross-cultural and buyer dependency influences on the nature of commitment and its relevant determinants; and (3) enriches the current relationship marketing theories with new variables. The resulting framework synthesized elements of trust, bonds, perceived value and relationship investments in a nomological structure that captured the variables relevant to B2B services. When applied to buyer archetypes grouped by culture and dependency, the framework confirmed the more relational orientation of collective/feminine cultures and the more calculative orientation of individualistic/masculine cultures such as that found in the U.S. In addition, buyers of high dependency showed higher emphasis on trust and were less economically motivated to commitment when compared to their lower dependency counterparts.