About AMA

Executive Summary
In this article, Sharma, Young, and Wilkinson identify the different dimensions of relationship commitment in international marketing relationships and develop ways of measuring them. Developing effective relationships with customers and suppliers is increasingly being viewed as an important source of competitive advantage, and gaining and sustaining another firm’s commitment to a relationship is a key part of this. The time and money costs of relationship development are considerable and are even more significant and problematic in international business because of the problems of developing and maintaining business relationships across diverse and distant cultures. This study provides a clear and more detailed picture of the kinds of commitment that bind parties in a relationship and shows how the mixture of commitment is different in good- and poor-performing relationships.

Sharma, Young, and Wilkinson identify five types of commitment: affective, value-based, locked-in, obligation-based, and behavioral/resource commitment. They establish and test the distinctiveness and value of these five commitment types in a two-stage study of Indian firms’ customer–supplier relationships with a wide range of countries. In-depth interviews with Indian managers about the nature of commitment in their international business relationships show that all five types of commitment are present; these interviews also assisted in the development of measures of these dimensions. Then, Sharma, Young, and Wilkinson use a survey of 160 Indian firms’ international relationships to develop and refine their measures of the five types of commitment. Each type plays a somewhat different role in enabling effective relationship performance, and the relative importance of each type depends on the region of the world from which the trading partner comes. For example in Indian–Asian relationships, affective commitment is linked with better performance, but this is not the case Europe or the United States. In relationships with European partners, locked-in commitment seems to affect performance adversely, but not as much in relationships with Asian or U.S. partners.

Several managerial implication flow from these findings. Sharma, Young, and Wilkinson’s work highlights (as has the work of many others) the potential role and importance of committed relationships with suppliers and customers. The authors also show how the cultural context of a relationship affects the role of and sensitivity to different types of commitment. Further work is needed to examine the role of each form of commitment in different cultural contexts, but the results help sensitize managers to differences in the way relationships develop and function with firms from different parts of the world. This will enable international marketing managers to do more targeted relational fine tuning than would otherwise be possible.

Biography
Neeru Sharma’s early education took place in India before she moved to Australia, where she completed a master’s degree in Marketing at the University of Wollongong and a PhD in Marketing in 2002 at the University of Technology, Sydney. She is now a lecturer in the School of Marketing at the University of Western Sydney, where she teaches and researches in the areas of international marketing and services marketing. Her current research interests focus on cross-cultural relationship development in international business. In addition to Journal of International Marketing, she has recently published in International Journal of Service Industry Management and Journal of Services Marketing.

Louise Young received her PhD and BCom from the University of New South Wales (Australia). Her research focuses on the evolution and management of business relationships and networks and, in particular, on the psychology of the people participating in them. This work is carried out in collaboration with researchers in Australia, Europe, the United States, and Asia. Her research has been funded by grants from the Australian Research Council, the Australian Trade Commission, and the CSIRO, in addition to various university research grants. She also works extensively in commercial market research, participating in the recruiting of and generation of market research for Australian firms, government institutions, and not-for-profit organizations. In addition to Journal of International Marketing, she has recently published in Journal of Business and Industrial Marketing, Journal of Marketing Theory, Industrial Marketing Management, and Journal of Business-to-Business Marketing.

Ian Wilkinson has a BSc (Hons) from Southampton University, an MSc from Warwick, and a PhD from the University of New South Wales. His research focuses on the nature and development of interfirm relationships and networks in domestic and international business and their implications for management and policy. He is currently working on the development of agent-based models of relationships and networks and linking this with narrative event sequence methods. In addition to Journal of International Marketing, she has recently published in the Antitrust Bulletin, Journal of Business and Industrial Marketing, Marketing Theory, Industrial Marketing Management, and Journal of Business Research.