The role and value of long term relationships in business to business environment

Seminar paper from the year 2002 in the subject Business economics - Offline Marketing and Online Marketing, grade: 1,3 (A), University of Tampere (School of Business Administration), course: Buying Behaviour, language: English, abstract: The profitability of any company and stability in its activity depends on the preferences of their customers. Marketing mix also plays a very important role. Analysing custom-ers company should choose the product to produce, price for which to sell, place of selling, the strategy of distribution and advertising. Company should not ignore their competitors. During recent years the importance of inter-company relationships has been widely recognised. Customers are always searching for suppliers that can and are prepared to meet their requirements. To make a right decision it is necessary to analyse the market. That is the work of departments. The relationships between buy-ers and sellers are rather like the relationships between people. Two companies are surviving due to each other. Relationships exist between all suppliers and their cus-tomers in business markets. The decision that managers of a company face are mainly how to achieve that relationship and what sort of relationships they would like to have. Company have to set priorities between their different relationships, allocate resources accordingly and manage them individually. An important task to build rela-tionships with the customers, which will span not just several months but be counted by decades. Long-term relationships company behave according to the values that create genuine trust over time: quality, honesty, accountability and fairness. To serve clients now and as far into the future as they may need a company. Company have to strive to build long-term relationships with our customers this enables both partners to share in the economic benefits and trust established by a continued relationship.