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Employees often expect an emphasis on financial aspects to be predominant when their employers choose a fund management company for the investment of employees’ pension fund deposits. By contrast, in an attempt to appear as socially responsible company managers may emphasize social responsibility (SR) in pension fund choices. The purpose of this paper is to examine to what extent managers for small- and medium-sized companies emphasize SR vs expected returns when choosing investment managers for their employees’ pension funds.

A conjoint experiment among 276 Norwegian SMEs’ decision makers examines their trade-offs between social and financial goals in their choice of employees’ pension management. Furthermore, the study examines how the companies’ decision makers’ characteristics influence their pension fund management choices.

The findings show that the employers placed the greatest weight to suppliers providing funds adhering to socially responsible investment (SRI) practices, followed by the suppliers’ corporate brand credibility, the funds’ expected return, and the suppliers’ management fees. Second, employers with investment expertise emphasized expected returns and downplayed SR in their choice, whereas employers with stated CSR-strategies downplayed expected return and emphasized SR.

Choice of supplier to manage employees’ pension funds relates to a general discussion on whether companies should do well – maximizing value, or do good, – maximizing corporate SR. In this study, doing well means maximizing expected returns and minimizing costs of the pension investments, whereas doing good means emphasizing SRI in this choice. Unfortunately, the employees might pay a price for their companies’ ethicality as moral considerations may conflict with maximizing the employees’ pension fund value.

Buyers assessing bids from suppliers of experience services face both an adverse selection and a potential moral hazard problem. The purpose of this study is to examine the relative importance of various signals of supplier reputation conveying information about unobserved supplier quality, which is important for identifying the best tender; and whether price is contingent on supplier reputation and on buyer's quality sensitiveness in a competitive bidding situation.

This study builds on a conjoint experiment where 19 contractors consider alternative scenarios representing tenders from subcontractors of plumbing services. In the scenarios the subcontractors differ on their reputation and price variables, while the contractors differ in their quality sensitiveness. Multiple regressions analyzes the contingent price effects.

Although low price is generally important for subcontractor selection, quality-sensitive buyers are willing to pay subcontractors a price premium to prevent quality debasement. On the other hand, despite the combined significance of supplier reputation on choice, buyers are not willing to pay price premiums to suppliers with a quality reputation.

Conjoint studies produce multiple cases but the underlying sample is limited. Therefore, this study should be regarded as preliminary and a basis for further validation on larger samples.

In competitive bidding situations, suppliers with strong quality reputations may benefit most by low price offers. Thus, suppliers with a strong reputation should achieve profitability through a volume premium rather than a price premium effect. Suppliers opting for price premiums should target the quality sensitive segment of the market.

In contrast to previous findings in B2B brand equity studies, but in line with findings in information economics, this study suggests that suppliers with a reputation for quality will not receive price premiums. The results indicate that in bidding contexts in B2B markets, the reputation variables may enhance rather than reduce buyers' price sensitivity, because supplier reputation increases low price credibility.

Increased concentration within the retail trade may have great, negative consequences for a supplier if its relationship to a chain dissolves. The objective of this study is to develop an understanding of the way in which the supplier′s use of the marketing mix components (salesforce, product, profitability and marketing support) affects the satisfaction and loyalty of the retailers. Assesses this relationship by drawing on relationship formation within a channel of distribution theory, an empirical testing, using multiple regression analysis, on a sample of Norwegian supermarkets. The results indicate that satisfaction and loyalty are influenced differently by the marketing mix components. Satisfaction is found to be associated mainly with factors representing co‐operativeness and interpersonal contact, while loyalty is associated with elements expressing dependency, sources of power and stakes in the relationship.