Schakett publishes article

Tammy Schakett, assistant professor of entrepreneurship, is author of an article to be published in the December 2011 Journal of Relationship Marketing. Titled “Effects of Social Bonding on Business to Business Relationships,” the study investigates the social relationship between buyers’ key contact employees and sellers’ key contact employees in business-to-business (B2B) marketing relationships in service industries. 

The study specifically examines the impact of social bonding on the buyer’s 1) loyalty towards the seller, 2) trust in the seller, 3) satisfaction with the seller, and 4) perceptions of the service quality provided by the seller, while controlling for structural and economic bonds. To address this question, embeddedness theory, social exchange theory, marketing exchange theory and attribution theory are employed. Using partial least squares analysis, the results demonstrate that social bonds, while controlling for structural and economic bonds, significantly impacted the buyer’s loyalty, trust, satisfaction and perceptions of service quality towards the seller.