Il valore delle relazioni nei business markets: il caso dell'ICT security

The concept of value has been studied from many different perspectives within economics and business management studies. Literature on value can be traced back to the areas of strategy, of organisational behaviour, of finance, of bookkeeping, and even of marketing. Particularly, studies on value verification have a long tradition in business marketing contexts, but they have mainly focused on the value of tangible goods, leaving out relationship dimensions. In the last years, this limit has partly been gone over with the introduction of the relationship value construct and the consequent revival of the interest in the concept of value. But despite the recent attention by scholars in this area and the growing body of literature, there is no shared view about its definition and a generally accepted conceptualisation of its dimensions. Starting from these premises, this paper aims at understanding what relationship value consists of both for customers and suppliers and how it can be represented. As for methodology 8 dyads and 3 triads (25 in-depth interviews) in the ICT Security Industry have been analysed. The output is the identification of the Relationship Value Areas model, within which a business relationship can be positioned on the basis of the desired, perceived and generated value by actors.