Appropriating value from industrial buyer-seller relationships by leveraging network capability

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to investigate how a B2B firm can improve its value appropriation from industrial buyer–seller relationships by leveraging its network capability, as well as the curvilinear moderating role of the firm’s network embeddedness.

Design/methodology/approach

This paper empirically examines seven research hypotheses about the relationship between network capability and value appropriation and the curvilinear moderating effect of network embeddedness based on a questionnaire survey among 232 Chinese B2B firms.

Findings

It is found that network capability helps sellers appropriate value from industrial buyer–seller relationships via information acquisition, network resources and power. The mediating effect of network resources is the highest, followed by power and information acquisition. In addition, a seller’s embeddedness in a business network positively moderates the network capability and value appropriation link in an inverted U-shaped way.

Originality/value

The study makes significant contributions to the literature on value appropriation and also provides insightful implications for B2B firms to capture value from industrial buyer–seller relationships by leveraging network capability and network embeddedness.

Citation

Zhang, J. and Du, M. (2019), "Appropriating value from industrial buyer-seller relationships by leveraging network capability", Management Decision, Vol. 57 No. 11, pp. 2911-2939. https://doi.org/10.1108/MD-03-2017-0183