The Importance of Social Bonds for Communication and Trust in Marketing Relationships in Professional Services
Year: 2008
Type: article
Abstract: This paper examines trust, communication and social bonds in marketing relationships in professional services in a business-to-business market.The context of our empirical research is the marketing research industry in Slovenia.The results show that social bonds in the examined context are present to a low extent.The analysis revealed two groups of companies on the basis of developed social bonds.The first group ('strictly business' relationships) consists of 62.7% of companies, which have a lower level of social bonds between individuals than 37.3% of companies that belong to the second group ('business friends' relationships).Analysis also revealed that social bonds positively influence openness of communication and trust.
Author: Barbara Čater
Institutions: University of Ljubljana, Ekonomski Inštitut
Language: English
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W2994483920