Abstract
The Internet is emerging as a powerful connecting force, allowing firms to serve customers, collaborate with partners and suppliers, and empower employees more effectively than ever before. In the network economy, relationships with key stakeholders are becoming valuable assets of the firm, but few firms manage relationships effectively. The authors propose that firms need to take a more holistic approach to understanding where their relational equity resides and how it should be managed and measured. They also propose that relational equity is not limited to relationships with customers but also includes relationships with partners, suppliers, and employees. Effective management of relational equity requires firms to think in an integrative manner along several dimensions: strategy, process, technology, organization design, and metrics. The authors develop conceptual frameworks for each of these dimensions. Taken together, these frameworks offer a conceptual foundation for research and managerial practice on managing relational equity.
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Seurat Company
Mohanbir Sawhney is the McCormick Tribune Professor of Technology and the director of the Center for Research Technology and Innovation at the Kellogg School of Management, North-western University. He is the coauthor (with Jeff Zabin) ofThe Seven Steps to Nirvana: Strategic Insights Into eBusiness Transformation (2001). His research has been published in leading journals such asCalifornia Management Review, Harvard Business Review, Interactive Marketing, Management Science, Marketing Science, and theJournal of the Academy of Marketing Science. He also writes for leading trade publications, including theFinancial Times, CIO Magazine, andBusiness 2.0. He has created three new M.B.A. courses at Kellogg, as well as a popular executive course, and has won several awards for teaching. He is a fellow of the World Economic Forum, a fellow at DiamondCluster International, and a charter member if The Indus Entrepreneurs (TiE). He advises and speaks to Global 2000 firms worldwide and serves on the advisory boards of several technology startup companies. He holds a Ph.D. in marketing from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.
Jeff Zabin is a vice president at Seurat Company, a technology firm that specializes in Internet-based marketing resource management services. He is the coauthor (with Mohanbir Sawhney) ofThe Seven Steps to Nirvana: Strategic Insights Into eBusiness Transformation (2001). He has written about marketing in the network economy for several trade magazines, includingComputerworld, and he is a frequent speaker on the topic, with recent audiences including the Strategic Management Association, the Society for Information Management, and the Marketing Science Institute. Prior to joining Seurat, he was a research fellow with DiamondCluster International and a business analyst at a boutique consultancy called Digital Knowledge Assets. A graduate of the University of Wisconsin and a returned Peace Corps volunteer, he began his career in educational publishing at Houghton Mifflin. He has helped launch several Internet ventures and currently serves on the advisory board of PreviewPort, Inc.
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Sawhney, M., Zabin, J. Managing and measuring relational equity in the network economy. J. of the Acad. Mark. Sci. 30, 313–332 (2002). https://doi.org/10.1177/009207002236908
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/009207002236908