36 The Marketing Book
buyers and sellers could be equally active in
pursuing exchange. Equally, the work identified
the influence of the business environment and
atmosphere on both short-term exchange epi-
sodes and long-term relationships affecting co-
operation, adaptation and institutionalization
(Håkansson, 1982). Although the Interaction
Approach was commended for advancing
understanding of exchange in a business-to-
business context, it was also criticized for (a)
taking a single actor (buyer or seller) perspective
(see Ford, 1997) and (b) being too difficult to
operationalize (see Wilson, 1995). Whilst the
latter problem has not been overcome, the early
focus on dyadic interaction (one buyer and seller
pair) was later superseded by the network
approach, which looks at webs of linked rela-
tionships (see Andersson and S ̈oderlund, 1988;
Ford, 1997).
The major contributions of the interaction
approach to our present understanding of
relationship marketing include the following
issues:
Both buyers and sellers have similar roles in
forming, developing and operating relationships
(Håkansson, 1982; Ford, 1990).
The match between supplier capability and
customer need is accomplished by interaction
between the two parties, and adaptation by
one or both of them (Håkansson, 1982).
Personal contacts are frequently used as a
mechanism for initiating, developing and
maintaining relationships (Turnbull, 1979;
Cunningham and Homse, 1986).
Interaction with other companies is the force
that unifies the company and gives it the
capability to perform its activities (Ford, 1990).
Each party to a relationship may take the
initiative in seeking a partner, and either party
may attempt to specify, manipulate or control
the transaction process. Thus, ‘this process is
not one of action and reaction: it is one of
interaction’ (Ford, 1997, p. xi).
The relationship between buyer and seller is
frequently long-term, close and involves
complex patterns of interactions.
The links between buyer and seller often
become institutionalized into a set of roles
that each party expects the other to perform.
Both parties are likely to be involved in
adaptations of their own processes or product
technologies to accommodate the other, and
neither party is likely to make unilateral
changes to its activities without consultation
or at least consideration of the reaction of
their opposite number in the relationship.In the USA, research was also underway on
business-to-business exchange, although, ini-
tially at least, this remained within the
dominant mix management and adversarial
paradigm. Earlier research had demonstrated
the importance of power and conflict, partic-
ularly in channel research (El-Ansary and
Stern, 1972; Wilkinson, 1973, 1979; Etgar, 1976),
and in the early 1980s there was the beginning
of a recognition that co-operation might prove
to be a more important explanatory variable. In
the latter part of the 1980s, two significant
events occurred. Firstly, within the business
environment generally, the impact of Japanese
business systems, particularly ‘just-in-time’,
was having an important impact on the com-
petitiveness of US and European companies
(see Speckman, 1988; Webster, 1992). One of the
major sources of competitive advantage
enjoyed by the Japanese was assumed to be the
strength of business relationships and the
nature of their distribution systems, where a
major Japanese company would ‘sit in a web of
strong permanent relationships with its major
creditors, suppliers, key customers and other
important stakeholders... bound together by
complex and evolving ties of mutual benefit
and commercial interest’ (Doyle, 2002, p. 14).
This propelled an interest in relationships
generally (Webster, 1992; M ̈oller and Wilson,
1995). Secondly, Dwyer et al. (1987) wrote a
seminal paper that employed social exchange
theory to offer insights into the motivation and
process of relationship formation. The major
contribution of this paper was the suggestion
that, like business markets, consumer markets