The advent of the internet has created numerous opportunities for marketing professionals to enhance current marketing practices, including electronic relationships. However, the investigation of e-relationships and the factors from the e-marketing point of view that influence e-relationships in an internet environment are scant. Furthermore, there appears to be no investigation of this phenomenon within the context of Greek Business to Business Medium-sized firms (MSF). The literature does not investigate this research problem in any depth. However, a framework about the role of the business today in a changing globalized environment, the shift from ‘old’ to ‘new’ world of business B2B relationships in an e-business context, the strategic features of buyer-supplier relationships and relationship marketing in the existing literature were investigated. To investigate these research issues, a quantitative research was contacted. The sample comprised of forty (40) companies. The split is as follows: twenty of them make use of e-commerce (20-e-commerce) and the remaining twenty do not (20-traditional).
Amongst the 20-e-commerce companies, there are 10 that are buyers and 10 that are sellers/suppliers. We have the same type split amongst the 20-traditional companies. Data was analyzed and the hypotheses specified were tested using statistical techniques. The findings of this research have implications for the three research issues. The results of the research showed that moving on to the findings regarding the B2B relationships that are complemented by e-commerce practices, we understand that a number of our original
hypotheses reject and in some cases, we see no divergence between traditional and ecommerce businesses. The conclusions of our research revealed that in post-industrial eRa MSFs’ strategic objectives remain the same whether operating in an e-commerce or in a traditional environment. MSFs are differentiating their tactics and means used to face the intense competition which is characterized by the globalization of markets.
The main contribution of this research is the development and confirmation of a final theoretical framework about e- relationships in -sized Β2Β firms.