Shifts in buyer-seller relationships: A retrospective on Handfield and Bechtel (2002)

One of the most highly cited papers in the Industrial Marketing Management journal was published 17 years ago, and proposed a strong linkage in the elements of buyer-seller trust, asset specificity, contracts, and supply chain performance. In this paper, explore the question of "what has changed"? We note that the emergence of 1) real-time analytic technologies, 2) new governance models that span multiple parties across organizations in a supply chain network, and 3) new digital innovation requiring partnering with new entities are required to produce end to end analytical capabilities. We offer three new propositions that provide some insights towards future research areas, and we also note that although interpersonal buyer-seller relationships will remain important, digital transformation is changing the nature of how these will unfold. Our propositions provide insights on how the role of technology and other shifts in the supply chain ecosystem is shifting the role of buyers and sellers in the industrial landscape. I offer these insights in the hope that they may provide a basis for future researchers to engage in research in the field of emerging industrial buyer-seller relationships, and devote this paper to the memory of Christian.