Customer Coordination Challenges

1800 Words8 Pages

Purpose of the study is to describe and discuss customer relationship coordination challenges following international acquisitions. Focus of this research is placed on B2B customers. The research are conducting base on these two thesis statement which first is what coordination challenges arise from international acquisitions in regard to customer relationship and how are the challenges connected to different customer-related motives and pre-acquisition relationships.
To conducting data collection, the researcher use multiple case study approach. This type of method enable comparison and also provide additional explanations and examples. To identify the different on sampling, acquisitions with different pre-acquisition composition of customers …show more content…

The three case study that have been described as to relate to the main issues and to see what coordination challenges could be explained by specific pre-acquisition customer relationships and motives. While an international acquisition mostly would mean that the acquirer establishes itself on a new geographical market, it may already have customers and representation there. Toyota’s acquisition of BT Industries illustrates this, as does BT Industries’ acquisition of Raymond in regard to customers. In the former, overlapping customers needed to be coordinated and a division of market was suggested. In the latter, the motive was to acquire a local representation for the customers, and thereby connect them to the acquired party. Pre-acquisition relationships hence link to coordination. As for challenges and in the circumstance of overlapping pre-acquisition representation, risks seem to be internal competition and cannibalism (Keller, 2003; Melkonian et al., 2006) follow. In the case of Toyota’s acquisition of BT Industries, double representation occurred on local markets and with cross-facilitation of products, the acquirer and the acquired party became competitors. Customers tried to play the companies off against each other, and the acquirer’s independent dealers did not act in compliance with the coordination structures and processes provided by the acquirer. This …show more content…

Coordination was impacted by customer reactions to different extents. Either customers created their own rules and thereby offset the intentions of the acquirer, zor they opposed those intentions by objecting to them. This points to customers as actors and reactors (O ¨berg, 2013). Toyota’s acquisition of BT Industries indicates how customers opposed the idea of separate contracts with the acquirer and the acquired party (reaction), and how they played the parties against one another to negotiate the best deals (the customer as actor). In NetSys’ acquisition of Verimation, customers reacted to the integration through allying with the acquired party, and telling that party that it did not want to have anything to do with the acquirer (see, e.g. the IKEA quotation in the case description). In BT Industries’ acquisition of Raymond, customers either preferred the USA or the European variants of the products, here linking customers’ actions to how they themselves had internationalised their businesses. Coordination was affected in its realisation in all these cases. The customer relationships changed as a consequence of the coordination (including also customer reactions). Such changes could involve both the content of the relationship (what is offered and who represents the firm) (O ¨berg, 2008), and the characteristics of the relationship (density, quality, authority) (Palmatier, 2008). Here, the

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