Intangible relationship value: towards deeper understanding

This paper briefly reviews recent research into the value of buyer-seller relationships and then focuses specifically on the business to business context. It identifies the different approaches of the published research to the multiple perspectives of a relationship that can be adopted, such as: that of the buyer versus the seller; the identification of value drivers versus dimensions; tangible versus intangible aspects; and the differing extents to which human aspects of the relationship are considered. It then describes a replication which supports Baxter and Matear’s (2004) study of the dimensions of the intangible aspects of business to business buyer-seller relationships, synthesised from the intellectual capital literature.