Role of Internet

FRONTIERS OF E-BUSINESS RESEARCH 2004
315
An Exploratory Study of the Roles of Internet
Communication in Business Relationships
Nataša Golik Klanac
Doctoral student, Hanken - Swedish School of Economics and Business Administration, [e-mail] Abstract
The development of successful business relationships relies greatly on interpersonal contacts.
However, due to certain advantages of Internet communication, numbers of relationships start to relay increasingly on this impersonal way of communication. Therefore, there is a need to study what roles could and could not Internet communication serve for in business relationships. Although the increasing importance of Internet communication in business relationship is acknowledged in numbers of studies, there is no any wide investigation on its roles. Hence, the purpose of this paper is to explore the roles that Internet communication has in business relationships. The analysis of recent studies shows that the most emphasized role of Internet is information exchange role. Nevertheless, studies indicate as well on possibility of Internet having other roles such as social role and conflict reducing role. In addition, some negative roles of Internet, such as dependence creating role can be found. Still, more in depth studies on such roles are required.
Keywords
internet communication, business relationships
Introduction
The development of successful interorganizational relationships is very critical in business-tobusiness marketing and is mainly based in the quality and quantity of information exchange
(Håkansson 1982). Also, numbers of other studies emphasize the importance of communication in business relationships (e.g. Dwyer et al 1987; Duncan & Moriarty 1998;
Nind & Thomas 2001; Cheng 2001; Huhtinen & Virolainen 2002; Massie & Anderson 2003), pointing out that communication is necessary for developing strong relationships between buyers and suppliers. Therefore, it can be said that

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