Paper info

Broadening the Competitive Advantage Perspective: Trustworthiness of Supplier Companies and Their Representatives as a Competitive Advantage

Bernd Günter

The paper was published at the 25th IMP-conference in Marseille, France in 2009.

The conceptual article deals with the taxonomy and managerial handling of competitive advantages. It suggests an extended list of competitive advantages including time-related differences and differences in fulfilling promises and thus trustworthiness. Trustworthiness is considered in connection with reliability but interpreted as a more restricted and specialised variable. The article proposes a set of hypothesis for the analysis of the relevance and importance of trustworthiness from a buyer's perspective and for action/reaction by suppliers. The conceptual approach of this "work-in-progress" article points out the need for empirical research on trustworthiness as a buyer´s evaluation criterion and a supplier´s attribute in business-to-business marketing relationships.