TY - JOUR
T1 - Heuristics in customer-supplier interaction
AU - Guercini, Simone
AU - La Rocca, Antonella
AU - Runfola, Andrea
AU - Snehota, Ivan
PY - 2015
Y1 - 2015
N2 - In customer-supplier relationships individuals representing respective companies interact to solve a number of
adaptive problems and how the relationships will develop depends on the solutions they jointly devise. Their interactive
meetings are characterized by conditions of limited time, information, and processing capacity that render
extensive information gathering and analytical cognitive elaboration impracticable and lead the individual actors
to adopt behaviors based on rules and heuristics. In this paper, we review the extant literature on heuristics in management
and present the findings of an exploratory study on the use of heuristics in interactions in customer supplier
relationships. We found that preparing for meetings and during them actors use six sets of heuristics. Heuristics
used in interaction during the meetings concern the degree of adaptation to the specific counterpart, how to
react to unexpected developments, and a general code of conduct. In preparing for meetings, heuristics are used to
define the information to collect, its sources, and how to use it. Our study suggests heuristics used are personal, originate
in both organizational norms and personal experience, and are seldom shared with others.
AB - In customer-supplier relationships individuals representing respective companies interact to solve a number of
adaptive problems and how the relationships will develop depends on the solutions they jointly devise. Their interactive
meetings are characterized by conditions of limited time, information, and processing capacity that render
extensive information gathering and analytical cognitive elaboration impracticable and lead the individual actors
to adopt behaviors based on rules and heuristics. In this paper, we review the extant literature on heuristics in management
and present the findings of an exploratory study on the use of heuristics in interactions in customer supplier
relationships. We found that preparing for meetings and during them actors use six sets of heuristics. Heuristics
used in interaction during the meetings concern the degree of adaptation to the specific counterpart, how to
react to unexpected developments, and a general code of conduct. In preparing for meetings, heuristics are used to
define the information to collect, its sources, and how to use it. Our study suggests heuristics used are personal, originate
in both organizational norms and personal experience, and are seldom shared with others.
KW - Heuristics, Customer-supplier relationships, Interaction, Cognition, Actors in business relationships
KW - Heuristics, Customer-supplier relationships, Interaction, Cognition, Actors in business relationships
UR - http://hdl.handle.net/10807/178456
U2 - 10.1016/j.indmarman.2015.03.008
DO - 10.1016/j.indmarman.2015.03.008
M3 - Article
SN - 0019-8501
SP - 26
EP - 37
JO - Industrial Marketing Management
JF - Industrial Marketing Management
ER -