In industrial plant market, relationships with buyers bring a lot of benefits. Relationships can be created and managed by continuous communication based on trust, and IT and network technologies are utilized to promote interactive information sharing and diffusion of knowledge into organizations.
In the transactional view, relationships are evolving such as: needs recognition, alternative seeking, alternative evaluation, transaction, long-term relationship and strategic relationship.
Driving factors for long-term relationships are communication, learning, and positioning. To improve relationships, communication will be developed from individual to organizational, learning from personalized to inter-organizational, positioning from products to corporation.
In the case study, relationship types are divided by ownership and transaction experience into five, and the success factors at each relationship stage are defined with the applicable ITs.
