Factores Tecnológicos

A group of researchers from fields of industrial purchasing and industrial marketing came together to form the Industrial Marketing and Purchasing (IMP) Project Group and to publish one of the first comprehensive marketing and purchasing frameworks called the IMP Interaction Model. This group of researchers included Malcom Cunningham, Elling Homse, Peter Turnbull, David Ford, Lars Hallen, Jan Johanson, Bjorn Wootz, Ivan Snehota, Michael Kutschker, Jean-Paul Valla, Michel Perrin, and Hakan Hakansson. Their work was published in a text edited by Hakansson in 1982, The International Marketing and Purchasing of Industrial Goods: An Interaction Approach. [4-1] Their IMP Interaction Model challenged the traditional method of more narrow analysis of a single discrete purchase and described relationships as long-term and involving complex patterns of interaction between two

102

companies. The group’s research investigated what leads up to the purchase transaction and what happens after the purchase transaction, and argued that these events don’t happen in isolation. The group emphasized conclusions based upon earlier empirical studies in the 1970’s that showed there was a significant lead time and investment when making a purchasing decision, and they concluded that markets were not as dynamic as thought, and often slow to change resulting in closer relationships between organizations. Industrial markets often exhibited stability where partners understood each well vs. dynamism, movement, and change. A particular relationship could change over time and one partner often maintained a differing level of power in the relationship. Assumptions that the buyer would always buy from a supplier where they could obtain the best terms of exchange for the moment did not always hold. The assumption that “suppliers will move to and from the market freely” did not hold, and the group argued that the market was not atomistic: that each organizational unit in the market was not as free and independent as once thought, and that more complex dependencies existed.

The IMP Group explained their viewpoint on marketing and purchasing modeling and summarized important research questions of the time. Researchers and practitioners shouldn’t separate analysis of a buyer-seller relationship and only investigate one side of the relationship. It is not a good approach to run marketing programs based upon a generalized model or generalized variables, and relationships could be unique. Key problems identified in marketing by the researchers included the allocation of resources, the design of competitive means, limitation problems related to the type of activities in which to be involved, and whether all buyer or

103

sellers should be treated the same. Problems identified also included handling problems, which described how to manage a relationship over its life cycle. The research group identified key problems in purchasing, including how to develop an appropriate structure of suppliers and how to manage relationships in an efficient way, which results in creating a balance between internal and external resources. In marketing management there existed a lack of relevant data expressed in a systematic way. In purchasing management the long-term relationship benefits are often non- measurable, short-term, and hard to measure, especially quality and service. The IMP Group identified that there exists social, economic, and technical dimensions of a business relationship and described model variables that included the history of relationship, why the relationship started, how the relationship developed over time, crises, technological adaptation, product characteristics, delivery patterns, patterns of contact between individuals, potential alternatives to a relationship, conflict, cooperation, spatial distance, cultural distance, experience levels, contact patterns between organizations, and dependence. The contribution of the IMP Group’s work was to define a new theoretical model so that “problems that were neglected earlier could be identified and solved.”

Based upon Williamson’s 1975 work, [4-2] the IMP Group concluded that the assumption of no cost of transaction had a great impact on the analysis of business relationships. Examples of transaction costs included obtaining market information and the cost and time of contract negotiations. Under the no transaction cost model, the seller could have been represented as solely a production function, but transaction costs changed the pricing and cost structure. Before, production was the primary cost

104

driver and marketing models “were described by response curves, each defined in relation to a certain marketing decision variable or the whole mix of a company.” The concept of transaction cost led to the research question of whether relationship stability was efficient or inefficient and under what circumstances. The IMP Group identified the following relationship transaction cost drivers: (1) search and evaluation, (2) cost for change in internal processes to deal with a different supplier, (3) cost of internal systems, (4) cost of establishing new individual contacts with both companies, and (5) unforeseen costs or consequences of changing relationships within small market where the cost of risk may be larger than a smaller difference in production cost. Also, other organizations may observe change in the market and react in an unknown or unforeseen way. These costs lead to stability with goals to reduce uncertainty and risk. Almost all supplier changes involve some investment cost. Potential benefits can occur with long-established relationships including innovation through knowledge sharing and understanding of each other.

The IMP Group based their IMP Interaction Model upon Inter-Organizational Theory and the existing marketing literature and defined four types of research studies: (1) organization based studies: the environment is seen as an external limitation, (2) studies based on several organizations: organization enters into network of relationships, and (3) studies of organizations in a societal context (beyond economic organization context). The model also incorporates concepts from New Institutionalism first described by Williamson in 1975 that exchange takes place in a market or internally in vertically integrated systems. [4-2] The IMP Interaction Model assumptions are: (1) both the buyer and seller are active participants, (2) the

105

relationship is often long-term, close and complex and policies may lead to management of relationship vs. other optimization, and (3) links between supplier- buyer often become institutionalized and expectations of how business will be conducted is often performed based upon business norms. The group identified four groups of variables, with the atmosphere variables defined as a result of the other three groups of variables: the interaction process and elements, participants in the interaction (individual and organization), and the environment.