EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
The purpose of this paper is to provide a broad overview of the extent and nature of alliances. It seeks to answer some basic questions about alliances in the Business to
Business marketing arena. Are alliances as extensive as the discussions and anecdotal evidence suggests? How have their numbers and character changed over time? Who are the participants? Are the most common alliances between Marketing companies? How are they structured and how much money is involved? Is licensing the main game or are there other aspects of structuring alliances that are important?
This research sought to understand the strategic alliances made by the firms for improving their commerce initiatives. Our goals were to understand why firms form strategic alliances for their commercial efforts, and what influences their choice on the type of alliances they make. Two theoretical perspectives, namely resource-based
view of firm and contingency theories were used to explain firm decisions on strategic
alliances and their choice of alliance modes.
English: Example of promotional "freebies" given t...
Map showing the Strategic Alliance Cyber Crime Wor...
Telefonica Commercial Map November 2009There are several important implications of our research for research and practice. It has been observed that the bargaining power of a firm in an economic exchange is determined by the assets it owns in the relationship. The firms ought to be willing to make a considerable investment in the shared assets if they expect high returns to flow from the cooperative relationship.
In this paper, we have provided a framework that allows us to begin to understand the
plethora of strategic alliances that exist in the business to business marketing world, and to explore when different types of asset ownership and contractual arrangements would be optimal. This paper also stress the importance of spillovers, ex post contracting problems, and relationships. We show how and why these factors are important.
Our simple model allows us to characterize...