Relationship Atmosphere : Behind the smoke - screen

Supplier-Customer relationships, considered as veritable sites of investment by the marketing firm, evolve over time to condition the position of the firm in its market, providing its strategic identity. This evolution is strongly influenced by less tangible elements intrinsically linked to exchanges taking place over time : the relationship " atmosphere " , often discussed in the literature relative to its constituent elements conceptualised using such constructs as trust, cooperation/conflict, power/dependency etc. The " atmosphere " dimension of the relationship is considered as essential in both understanding and, ultimately, managing relationships effectively. A first paper examined some of the underlying concepts relative to relationship atmosphere, evaluating the validity of the atmosphere scale using confirmatory factor analysis techniques, thus attempting first of all to answer some preliminary questions as to its real nature. To do so , it made use of a data base comprising characteristics of over a hundred international supplier-customer relationships across five national boundaries. The data base, the result of the IMP2 project performed in the 1990's, included on the one hand a section of attitude statements relative to perceptions by respondents – both suppliers and customers-of relationship atmosphere, and on the other hand sections investigating both the profiles of the supplier and customer firms in interaction, and the exchange processes between them. Preliminary findings suggested the existence of, rather than the model expected, one composed of six first-order factors, four of which combined to generate a second-order factor which we labelled relationship " Transparency ". This paper builds on the previous work, in particular with the use of an expanded data base, comprising a total of more than 300 interviews, including interviews from the Asia-Pacific region. Focus of analysis is on confirming and refining previous findings, and at the same time exploring the data base from a cultural similarity/difference perspective.