Paper info

EXPECTATION MANAGEMENT IN BUSINESS RELATIONS: STRATEGIES AND TACTICS

Anne-Mari Järvelin and Tuula Mittilä

The paper was published at the 17th IMP-conference in Oslo, Norway in 2001.

For an actor to survive in the hardening competitive world the management ofexpectations is crucial. The aim of our paper is to elaborate the strategies and tactics ofexpectation management in business-to-business setting. We start by presenting thenature and sources of expectations, then move on to discuss relationship managementstrategy and relation portfolio. After that, a classification of expectation managementstrategies is introduced and tactics for practice are presented. Finally, we divideexpectations into classis, mega and nano expectations and suggest that by engaging inqualitative study of expectations in business forecasting research we would gain newknowledge in the area.