Lost in Guanxi : How a Western company should use Relationship Marketing and/or Guanxi in China

Purpose: To describe the Relationship Marketing and Guanxi practices of a western company in China, and to create an understanding regarding the interconnection of Guanxi and Relationship Marketing as the foundation of such practices. Method: The research is qualitative with an inductive relation be...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Nystrand, Hannah
Format: Others
Language:English
Published: Linnéuniversitetet, Ekonomihögskolan, ELNU 2012
Subjects:
B2B
Online Access:http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:lnu:diva-19732
Description
Summary:Purpose: To describe the Relationship Marketing and Guanxi practices of a western company in China, and to create an understanding regarding the interconnection of Guanxi and Relationship Marketing as the foundation of such practices. Method: The research is qualitative with an inductive relation between theory and the empirical findings. With the research design of a case study of the western business-to-business service company ChinaNetCloud. The empirical material was collected through five semi-structured interviews done in China, with influencing persons of the case study organization ChinaNetCloud. Conclusion: Guanxi should be used to facilitate things and should not be established with anyone. To establish relationships are taking more time and will require many activities to maintain them. Relationship Marketing should be used to target other targets than the bases for Guanxi. The relationship are in China based on already existing connections and it is important that the western company is aware of that the relationship are in some cases of more importance than the product or service.  Face-to-face meeting should be used in order to establish relationships in the best way. Trust and commitment are also important dimensions in the relationships. A western company should use Guanxi and Relationship Marketing since it is important for both survival and success in China.