exploration might be attempted, which might result in other candi- date concepts and hence other candidate propositions.
If the analysis has been performed in an appropriate way i.e. if the procedures as described in the Chapters 5–7 for theory-testing have
been applied correctly, then the resulting propositions are proven to be true in the set of selected cases from which these propositions have
emerged. This implies that an initial test has been conducted and that replication studies can be designed and conducted.
Box 13 Building a theory on successfully helping city government
Yin 2003: 49 discusses Peter Szanton’s 1981 book Not well advised as an “excellent example of a multiple-case replication design”. This study, as presented by Yin, is not a
replication study in our definition of replication but a good example of a theory- building comparative case study.
Szanton studied eight cases of attempts by university groups to collaborate with city offi- cials, which all failed. Then he provides five more cases in which non-university groups
failed as well. A third group of cases showed how university groups successfully helped busi- nesses, not city government. A final set of three cases was successful in helping city govern-
ment. The latter three groups “were concerned with implementation and not just with the production of new ideas, leading to the major conclusion that city governments may have
peculiar needs in receiving advice”. Two conclusions seem to have been formulated:
1. supporting city governments is successful if there is an implementation of the
newly generated ideas; and 2.
city governments have other needs than businesses. This conclusion is pre- sented by Yin as “the major one”.
Neither of these two conclusions is the result of replication, because the concept of replication concerns conducting a next test after initial testing. No initial proposition
was formulated in this study and no testing was conducted, so there was no instance of replication in this study. Both conclusions are the result of theory-building through a
comparative case study.
Proposition 1, stating that “being concerned with implementation” is a necessary con- dition for successfully helping city governments, might have been based on an inspec-
tion of the data matrix of the 16 8 + 5 + 3 groups that tried to help a city government, provided that there is sufficient evidence for the absence of implementation activities in
the 13 non-successful groups. Proposition 2, stating that “city governments have peculiar needs”, might have been inferred from an inspection of the data matrix of the six 3 + 3
successful groups, provided that there is sufficient evidence for the absence of imple- mentation activities in the three groups that successfully supported businesses.
9.2 Case Study 5: Theory-building research
Building propositions about the kind of company representatives involved in communication with
providers of business services
1
by Wendy Van der Valk and Finn Wynstra
9.2.1 Introduction
Research in purchasing has traditionally focused on the procurement of industrial goods. The purchase of services, however, is substantially dif-
ferent from the purchase of goods Fitzsimmons et al., 1998; Axelsson and Wynstra, 2002; Smeltzer and Ogden, 2002. The basic characteris-
tics of services intangibility, heterogeneity, and perishability affect the purchase process in such a way that some of its aspects become more
important, more difficult, or just different in comparison with the pur- chase process for goods Axelsson and Wynstra, 2002. The services
marketing discipline has continuously emphasized that services are being produced in interactive processes between customers and service
providers Lovelock, 1983; Zeithaml and Bitner, 1996; Grönroos, 2000. Researchers in the field of purchasing seem to have failed to acknowledge
this characterizing aspect of continuous interaction.
Our study focuses specifically on the ongoing interaction between the buying and providing companies after the purchase decision i.e.
collaboration during the contract period. An interaction between buyer and provider does not only take place at the moment that prod-
ucts andor services are sold and purchased exchanged but also after the transaction, when the service has become part of the business of the
buyer. Then there is an ongoing business relation between buyer and provider. Elements of the buyer–provider interaction during ongoing
service exchange that might vary are:
■
the frequency of the interaction;
■
the intensity of the interaction;
1
This Chapter is based on: Van der Valk, W., F. Wynstra, and B. Axelsson 2006, “Identifying buyer-seller inter- action patterns in ongoing service exchange: Results of two explorative case studies,” Internal working paper,
May 2006.
■
the type of buyer and provider representatives hierarchical and functional scope of the customer–supplier contacts
Cunningham and Homse, 1986.
Wynstra et al. 2006 propose a classification of business services based on how the buying company uses the service with respect to its own
offerings. They claim that this usage dimension is one of the main determinants of how buyer–seller interaction processes should be
designed. They distinguish between four types of services.
1. Consumption services: these services remain within the buying company and do not affect how the buying company’s pri-
mary processes are carried out e.g. office cleaning services for an airline.
2. Instrumental services: these services remain within the buying company and affect how the buying company’s primary pro-
cesses are carried out e.g. information and communication technology services used to support flight operations.
3. Semi-manufactured services: these services are used as an input by the buying organization for particular offerings to final
customers and are thus passed on to end customers of the buying company e.g. weather forecasts which are transformed
into specific flight schedules.
4. Component services: these services are directly passed on to end customers of the buying company e.g. baggage handling at
the airport. Wynstra et al. 2006 suggest that the type of service affects:
■
the key objectives of the interaction;
■
the type of representatives involved on the buying company’s and the service provider’s side; and
■
the capabilities deemed critical for buyer and service provider. Van der Valk et al. 2006 claim that variation with regard to these
effects may be stronger for services that the buying company perceives as having high risk.
In the present study we are, specifically, interested in how experienced buying companies organize their interactions with the service provider
with respect to the type of representatives that deal with the interaction. We assume that buying companies have implicit “theories” about which
types of representatives are needed for the success of a purchase of a service, and that they differentiate their representation according to
the different types of services. Based on previous research and discus- sions with buyers, we also assume that these companies will estimate the
