Managing Business Relationships, 3E

Managing Business Relationships helps students and managers understand the reality of business networks and how to manage them. The third edition is updated with the IMP Group's latest thinking from research, consulting and teaching experience over the past five years.
Case material will be added from across Europe and lecturer support materials such as PowerPoint slides will be provided on a companion website.

David Ford is Professor Emeritus at the University of Bath. His work involves examining how the relationships between companies develop and how they can be managed effectively. It also involves issues of technological development within and between companies. He is currently working as part of the team on the "Newmark" project. This study is looking at ways in which complex networks of companies operate and how companies behave within them.

Lars-Erik Gadde is Professor of industrial marketing at Chalmers University of Technology, Gothenburg. His research interest is focused on the exchange processes among companies in business networks. These processes are analysed from two perspectives. The first concerns purchasing behaviour and purchasing strategies on the buying side, while the second deals with distribution strategies and distribution system dynamics on the selling side.

Hakan Hakansson is Professor in International Management, Norwegian School of Management, BI, Oslo. He has been involved in a large number of different projects ranging from long term engagement (several years) to short term teaching sessions for companies such as ABB, Alcatel, Ericsson, Euroc, Granges, IFL, Jarnia, NCC, Nutek, SIAB, Skanska and others.

Ivan Snehota is Professor of Marketing at the University of Lugano, Switzerland. He initiated research focusing on international markets for industrial goods and became in 1976 one of the founders of an international research project on industrial marketing and purchasing (IMP). Since then he has dedicated much of his time to teaching in undergraduate, graduate and postgraduate courses and resumed research related to market relationships.

About the Authors

Preface

Chapter 1. IMP and the Interaction Approach

Chapter 2. The Manager and the Network

Chapter 3. The Manager and the Relationship

Chapter 4. Relationships with Customers

Chapter 5. Relationships with Suppliers

Chapter 6. Distribution in Business Networks.

Chapter 7. Technology and Business Networks

Chapter 8. Managing in Networks

Chapter 9. So What Does it All Mean?

Index