Moving Towards Equilibrium in Industrial Markets: An Analysis of Dyadic Paired Relationships

Research into buyer-seller relations has received heightened interest over the last twenty years in leading academic discourse. During this period much of the existing literature has tended to predominantly focus upon analysing perceptions of relationships from one side of the dyad, and the collection and analysis of data from both sides has presented a challenge to researchers, as the scant literature would suggest. This article focuses on analysing perceptions of dyadic exchange parties (matched pairs), involving senior buyers from a sample of multinational enterprises, and marketing and sales managers from within corresponding medium sized enterprise suppliers, for three groups of dyads based on different relationship duration (short, medium and long-term). The findings shed further light upon collaborative working relationships, by demonstrating areas where perceptions among the partners are a) mutual, b) significantly different, and c) mutual and different based on relationships of a different temporal nature.