Relationship-Based Buying in Business Markets: Implications for Suppliers

Relationship-based buying is a practice that predates relationship selling, with evidence from the days of the Silk Route trade. Unsurprisingly, it is widely prevalent even today. Thus, it behooves businesses and marketers to gain a robust understanding of this phenomena to be able to leverage its advantages for themselves. In this lecture, Prof. Sheth highlights the benefits of Relationship-Based buying for the supplier (demand predictability, supply-chain efficiency, competitive barriers, etc.), why customers engage in it (cost-benefit and socio-cultural reasons), and how to sustain such buying behavior (customer education, user groups, joint ventures with customers and corporate social responsibility, amongst others).