Paper info

THE IMPACT OF INTERNET USE ON BUYER-SUPPLIER RELATIONSHIP ATMOSPHERE

naouel makaoui

The paper was published at the 25th IMP-conference in Marseille, France in 2009.

 To strengthen their position in today's highly competitive and fast paced business environment more and more organizations engage in long-term relationships with their suppliers. These inter-organizational relationships have proven to create value for both parties involved. However, the management of such relationships requires resources and is a complex task. Recent advances in information technology particularly the Internet offers new ways of managing inter-organizational relationships.  This paper explores the structure of key dimension of long-term relationship atmosphere scale in a French context. Beside this, we introduce and test the impact of Internet use, such as information, communication and transaction, on the key long-term relationship atmosphere (trust, commitment and loyalty). We hypothesize that use of the Internet for communication purpose would increase relationship closeness, whereas the use for information purposes would decrease. Using a sample of 176 French industrial buyers, we found that the use of Internet for information and communication purpose has a tendentiously positive effect on trust. On the contrary, the use it has a significant, negative, direct effects on commitment and loyalty. Furthermore, there effects are found to be mediated by Internet use for transaction.