Buyer-Seller Interdependence
Buyer-seller interdependence is indeed a hallmark of industrial marketing, especially for products used in the customer’s operations.
The buyer becomes crucially dependent on suppliers for many things – an assured supply of raw materials, components, or subassemblies; continued supply of maintenance and repair parts and skilled repair service for capital equipment; efficient order handling, delivery and usually extension of credit terms, and the like.
One significant result is that the ‘sale’, the actual transaction, is only one points on the time continuum in industrial marketing, albeit a crucial one, the way most business “keep score.”
By contrast, in consumer marketing the buyer-seller relationship often ends with the sale.
In industrial marketing, a significant negotiation process is often the most important regulator of the buyer-seller relationship, whereas consumer marketing usually lacks this, relying instead on an “arm’s length” transaction in an more or less competitive and often very impersonal market.
One of the major strategic drivers for both industrial marketers and their customers in the 1990’s is the move toward strategic partnerships.
Strategic partnerships with customers may require substantial investments in supporting services and system, such as electronic data interchange and these investments must be evaluated in the context of overall marketing strategy.
Buyer-Seller Interdependence
