Paper info

The nature of relationship atmosphere and links with the value of relationships: the case of Asia and Europe

Gilles Roehrich, Pierre Valette Florence and Robert Spencer

The paper was published at the 18th IMP-conference in Perth, Australia in 2002.

Supplier-customer relationships evolve over time to position of the firm in its marketand to provide its strategic identity. This evolution is strongly influenced by lesstangible elements intrinsically linked to exchanges taking place over time; therelationship atmosphere, often discussed in the literature relative to its constituentelements conceptualised using such constructs as trust, cooperation/conflict,power/dependency etc.This paper follows up on two previous publications, both based on the data collectedwithin the framework of the IMP2 Project. The first paper explored the structure of therelationship atmosphere scale in the European context. The second paper ran a similaranalysis, whilst adding data from China and Thailand. A comparison between theEuropean and Asian relationship atmosphere structure was now possible.This paper investigates the relationship atmosphere structure using second orderconfirmatory factor analysis and assesses the influence exerted by this atmosphere onthe quality or value of the relationship.