دانلود رایگان مقاله ارتباطات، تعامل و رضایت در روابط B2B

abstract

This study examines how traditional and new communication media impact satisfaction in business-to-business (B2B) relationships. We develop a conceptual model and empirically investigate hypotheses linking personal face-to-face (F2F), digital, and impersonal communication to buyer and supplier contacts, rationality, social interaction, and reciprocal feedback, and these interactivity dimensions to relationship satisfaction. Structural equation models are estimated with data from the commercial printing and graphic design industry. The findings indicate that personal has a stronger positive association than digital communication with dyadic contact (buyer and supplier contacts), social interaction, and reciprocal feedback, but a weaker positive association than digital with rationality. Digital has a stronger positive association than impersonal communication with dyadic contact, rationality, and reciprocal feedback, but a weaker positive association than impersonal with social interaction. Only rationality and reciprocal feedback have positive associations with satisfaction. Dyadic contact, however, has a negative association with satisfaction that is stronger for personal than digital communication.

4.3. Limitations and future research

A specific industry was chosen for the research in order to minimize the influence of extraneous sources of variation that might confound the results, but this limits generalizability. We were not as concerned about generalizability because it was an initial test of a theoretical model. Future research can use the model and scales developed in this study to replicate the research in other contexts. We were unable to distinguish between buyer and supplier contacts. Our measures for the number of buyer and supplier contacts were highly correlated making it impossible to distinguish between the two measures. Rather than examining the separate impacts of buyer and supplier contacts, the measures had to be combined into a single variable measuring dyadic contact. Further research is required to distinguish between buyer and supplier contacts, and can help improve our understanding, for example, of how buying center size influences the communications decisions of suppliers. Increasing dyadic contact has a negative impact on satisfaction for both personal and digital communication, but the negative impact is greater for personal than for digital communication. Further research is required to determine the optimum or maximum number of participants for effective communication using different modes. For instance, the number of possible participants may depend on the level of expertise of individual contacts and their experience with a mode of communication (Carlson & Zmud, 1999). Future research may also seek to investigate differences among types of digital communication. A study of communication between buyers and suppliers engaged in new product development found that both F2F and email communication had a positive relationship to knowledge exchange between them, but video conferencing was not significant and the effect of web-based tools was significant and negative (Thomas, 2013). Differences among types of digital media may make them more or less appropriate for different tasks and further research is required to better understand these differences. How communication modes change over the course of a relationship between buyer and supplier is another question for future research to address. Future research may also investigate how relationship satisfaction can lead to desired outcomes that are objective measures such as profits and new accounts.