Maintenance of machinery: Negotiating service contracts in business‐to‐business marketing

As industrial products are becoming more advanced and complex, the role of supporting services needed to exploit a product's function to an agreeable performance is becoming increasingly important. To achieve the best performance, industrial customers are entering into service contracts with the original equipment manufacturers (OEM) or independent service providers. This, in turn essentially involves service contract negotiation between OEM/service provider and the client. If such contracts are not negotiated carefully, it may lead to conflict and poor system performance. To achieve a win‐win situation for both parties, aspects such as what services to deliver, who is to deliver them, how they are to be delivered and received, and at which performance level, need to be considered in the negotiation process and agreed upon by both the provider and the client. A conceptual framework has been developed for service delivery negotiation process based on review of literature and analysis of results from a survey conducted to study the existing approaches being practiced by the industrial organizations to negotiate a service contract.

[1]  T. Markeset,et al.  Dimensioning of product support: issues, challenges, and opportunities , 2004, Annual Symposium Reliability and Maintainability, 2004 - RAMS.

[2]  Uday Kumar,et al.  A conceptual framework for the development of a service delivery strategy for industrial systems and products , 2004 .

[3]  Uday Kumar,et al.  Design and development of product support and maintenance concepts for industrial systems , 2003 .

[4]  Vidyadhar G. Kulkarni,et al.  Warranty reserves for nonstationary sales processes , 2002 .

[5]  Mohamed Ali Mirghani,et al.  A framework for costing planned maintenance , 2001 .

[6]  C. Fraser,et al.  Moral decision making in international sales negotiations , 2001 .

[7]  John N. Pearson,et al.  JIT, system integration and customer service , 2001 .

[8]  Valérie Mathieu.  Product services: from a service supporting the product to a service supporting the client , 2001 .

[9]  Stefan Stremersch,et al.  The purchasing of full-service contracts: An exploratory study within the industrial maintenance market , 2001 .

[10]  D. N. P. Murthy,et al.  Cost Sharing Warranty Policies for Second‐hand Products , 2001 .

[11]  D. N. P. Murthy,et al.  Reliability: Modeling, Prediction, and Optimization , 2000 .

[12]  Rolf A. Lundin,et al.  Communications and Expectations in After-Sales Service Provision , 1999 .

[13]  Hans Löfsten.  Management of industrial maintenance – economic evaluation of maintenance policies , 1999 .

[14]  Barbara T. Shapiro,et al.  The self‐directed team: A conflict resolution analysis , 1999 .

[15]  Robert D. Gulbro,et al.  Cultural differences encountered by firms when negotiating internationally , 1999 .

[16]  Keith Goffin,et al.  Customer support: A cross‐industry study of distribution channels and strategies , 1999 .

[17]  R. Dobbins,et al.  Self‐development: the nine basic skills for business success , 1997 .

[18]  Drew Martin.  Contractual aspects of cross‐cultural negotiations , 1997 .

[19]  Robert D. Gulbro,et al.  Differences in cross‐cultural negotiation behavior between industrial product and consumer product firms , 1995 .

[20]  Michael T. Bosworth.  Solution Selling: Creating Buyers in Difficult Selling Markets , 1994 .

[21]  Hugh E. Kramer,et al.  The Role of Cross‐cultural Negotiations in International Marketing , 1992 .

[22]  Michael H. Morris,et al.  Pricing an industrial service , 1989 .

[23]  Valarie A. Zeithaml,et al.  The service-quality puzzle , 1988 .

[24]  D. G. Nguyen,et al.  A general model for estimating warranty costs for repairable products , 1984 .

[25]  Wolter J. Fabrycky,et al.  Systems engineering and analysis , 1981 .