Rethinking industrial marketing: how to enhance capabilities and autonomy of South Korean suppliers in buyer–supplier relationships

Abstract

Firms will never succeed in today’s market without the cooperation of their partners. In this context, the relational view and commitment–trust theory have been dominant theories in the industrial marketing literature, and many scholars in this discipline have emphasized that suppliers (i.e., manufacturing firms supplying industrial goods) should be committed and responsive to relationships with their buyers (i.e., manufacturing firms buying industrial goods). However, the history of South Korean suppliers shows that although commitment and responsiveness of suppliers to buyers allow suppliers to grow in parallel with the growth of buyers, suppliers should have their own abilities and actual rights to manage buyer–supplier relationships to survive in today’s unstable and competitive market. Against this backdrop, this dissertation attempts to suggest implications for industrial marketing upon examining how suppliers can have abilities and actual rights to manage relationships with buyers in the context of enhancing organizational capabilities and relational autonomy. This dissertation, composed of three essays, extends the understanding of (1) whether and how suppliers’ commitment to buyers affects the suppliers’ firm-specific benefits in the contexts of organizational capabilities and market performance, (2) the process by which entrepreneurial marketing of suppliers enhances their technological capability and the factors that stimulate suppliers to implement entrepreneurial marketing, and (3) how suppliers keep their autonomy in the relationship with buyers overseas in terms of managing sales dependence on buyers. In this context, this dissertation contributes to the industrial marketing literature by providing insights into the diverse roles of industrial marketing in today’s market. In addition, on a practical level, this dissertation provides implications for the South Korean manufacturing industry by contributing to improving the competitiveness of South Korean suppliers in the global market and consequently to the growth of the manufacturing industry and the national economy of South Korea.