What Goes around Comes Around: Understanding Trust–Value Dilemmas of Market Relationships

The emerging cultural, societal, and environmental milieu of the twenty-first-century marketplace presents coping challenges for even strong and well-established companies. Few, if any, attempts have been made to examine systematically a firm's symbiotic link with society by focusing on the complexity and interconnectedness of its disparate market relationships. To facilitate a grounded approach to such modeling, the authors use a trust–value framework to analyze market relationships, the interconnections among them, and the trust–value dilemmas that arise in the context of two case studies: (1) the 3M company's decision to pull Scotchgard from the market and (2) the Los Angeles Unified School District versus the Coca-Cola Company regarding the sale of soft drinks on school premises. The authors chronologically assembled and systematically analyzed data from public, secondary, and industry sources, using relationship marketing theory principles to develop the individual case studies. The analyses indicate that the trust–value framework is a useful foundation for theorizing and empirically examining the complexity of a firm's market relationships by revealing interesting trust–value dilemmas and dynamics that connect the disparate relationships. The authors discuss implications for research and practice.

[1]  D. Washington.  FORM 10-K , 2005 .

[2]  David Morrison,et al.  Marketing to the campus crowd: everything you need to know to capture the $200 billion college market , 2004 .

[3]  K. Brownell,et al.  The sweet and lowdown on sugar [op ed] , 2004 .

[4]  Stephen L. Vargo,et al.  Evolving to a New Dominant Logic for Marketing , 2004 .

[5]  Jeffrey A. Hollender,et al.  What Matters Most: How a Small Group of Pioneers Is Teaching Social Responsibility to Big Business, and Why Big Business Is Listening , 2004 .

[6]  O. Ferrell,et al.  Corporate social responsibility and marketing: An integrative framework , 2004 .

[7]  Dean Keith Simonton,et al.  Qualitative and quantitative analyses of historical data. , 2003, Annual review of psychology.

[8]  Christine Moorman,et al.  Interfirm Cooperation and Customer Orientation , 2003 .

[9]  Véronique Pouillard.  L'école belge de publicité au début du XXe siècle , 2003 .

[10]  N. Smith,et al.  Corporate Social Responsibility: Whether or How? , 2003 .

[11]  Michael Moore.  Dude, Where's My Country? , 2003 .

[12]  Jagdip Singh,et al.  Consumer Trust, Value, and Loyalty in Relational Exchanges , 2002 .

[13]  John Hagel,et al.  Leveraged Growth: Expanding Sales Without Sacrificing Profits , 2002 .

[14]  M. Adams,et al.  The School Marketplace: Has Commercialization Gone Too Far?. , 2001 .

[15]  P. Truman.  Let's hear it for the boys. , 2000, Nursing standard (Royal College of Nursing (Great Britain) : 1987).

[16]  Jagdip Singh,et al.  Agency and trust mechanisms in consumer satisfaction and loyalty judgments , 2000 .

[17]  I. Maignan.  Corporate citizenship as a marketing instrument: concepts, evidence and research directions , 2001 .

[18]  Deborah Roedder John.  Consumer Socialization of Children: A Retrospective Look at Twenty-Five Years of Research , 1999 .

[19]  Tasadduq A. Shervani,et al.  Marketing, Business Processes, and Shareholder Value: An Organizationally Embedded View of Marketing Activities and the Discipline of Marketing , 1999 .

[20]  William L. Wilkie,et al.  Marketing's Contributions to Society , 1999 .

[21]  Stephen J. Arnold,et al.  The Role of Marketing Actions with a Social Dimension: Appeals to the Institutional Environment , 1999 .

[22]  S. Swanson,et al.  The role of relationship quality in the stratification of vendors as perceived by customers , 1998 .

[23]  C. Ray.  Let’s hear it for the boys! , 1998 .

[24]  Douglas B. Grisaffe,et al.  Antecedents and consequences of customer value : testing an expanded framework , 1998 .

[25]  T. L. Osterhus.  Pro-Social Consumer Influence Strategies: When and how do they Work? , 1997 .

[26]  Joseph P. Cannon,et al.  An Examination of the Nature of Trust in Buyer–Seller Relationships: , 1997 .

[27]  Peter A. Dacin,et al.  The Company and the Product: Corporate Associations and Consumer Product Responses , 1997 .

[28]  Anil Menon,et al.  Enviropreneurial Marketing Strategy: The Emergence of Corporate Environmentalism as Market Strategy , 1997 .

[29]  Minette E. Drumwright,et al.  Company Advertising with a Social Dimension: The Role of Noneconomic Criteria , 1996 .

[30]  Nancy Clark,et al.  Food Fight. , 1996, The Physician and sportsmedicine.

[31]  R. Oliver.  Varieties of Value in the Consumption Satisfaction Response , 1996 .

[32]  Dianne Dumanoski,et al.  Our Stolen Future , 1996 .

[33]  L. Berry.  Relationship marketing of services—growing interest, emerging perspectives , 1995 .

[34]  S. Hunt,et al.  The Commitment-Trust Theory of Relationship Marketing , 1994 .

[35]  Ronald C. Goodstein,et al.  UPC Scanner Pricing Systems: Are They Accurate? , 1994 .

[36]  J. Grube,et al.  Television beer advertising and drinking knowledge, beliefs, and intentions among schoolchildren. , 1994, American journal of public health.

[37]  M. Holbrook.  The Nature of Customer Value: An Axiology of Services in the Consumption Experience , 1994 .

[38]  Robert K. Yin,et al.  Applications of case study research , 1993 .

[39]  Peter R. Dickson,et al.  The Price Knowledge and Search of Supermarket Shoppers , 1990 .

[40]  James A. Narus,et al.  A Model of Distributor Firm and Manufacturer Firm Working Partnerships , 1990 .

[41]  G. Armstrong,et al.  Children's Use of Cognitive Defenses Against Television Advertising: A Cognitive Response Approach , 1988 .

[42]  F. Dwyer,et al.  Output Sector Munificence Effects on the Internal Political Economy of Marketing Channels , 1987 .

[43]  K. B. Murray,et al.  Strategic Management of the Socially Responsible Firm: Integrating Management and Marketing Theory , 1986 .

[44]  S. Shapiro,et al.  The Politics of Marketing: Analyzing the Parallel Political Marketplace , 1986 .

[45]  L. Pavitt.  Death by a thousand cuts. , 2019, Nursing mirror.

[46]  M. Goldberg,et al.  TV Messages for Snack and Breakfast Foods: Do They Influence Children's Preferences? , 1978 .

[47]  M. Goldberg,et al.  The Impact of Television Advertising on Children from Low Income Families , 1977 .

[48]  Ellen Wartella,et al.  How children learn to buy , 1977 .

[49]  M. White,et al.  The Unhealthy Persuader: The Reinforcing Value of Television and Children's Purchase-influencing Attempts at the Supermarket. , 1976 .