Abstract:
This paper develops a conceptual model of business-to-business relationships that extends prior
research. It incorporates a five-component structure of relationship commitment (value-based,
affective, locked-in, obligation-based, and behavioural). It includes relationship value, contained
in many existing models, in a noval way that links commitment to trust, switching costs,
idiosyncratic investments, and cooperation. Four versions of the emerging conceptual model are
developed to cope with the two-way/feedback links we include in the model to capture relational
process as two-way links otherwise cannot be examined with structural equations modeling
method. The paper concludes with preliminary results of the tests of the model(s).
