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Purpose: Ulaga and Eggert (2006a) examined a framework of relationship value in business markets. This study aims to replicate their study to show that relationship benefits are more important than relationship costs when it comes to choosing a main supplier. This research also extends the original study by hypothesising that the development of relationship value has a positive impact on relationship marketing outcomes, thus providing evidence for the nomological validity of the original scale. Design/methodology/approach: The study used empirical data from purchasing managers in manufacturing firms in the UK. The research instrument was a structured questionnaire. The study adopted a close replication to Ulaga and Eggert (2006a) using a rather similar context and methodology for comparison reasons. Findings: Relationship benefits are more important than relationship costs when it comes to choosing a main supplier. Cost competitiveness is a necessary but not sufficient condition to differentiate in business markets. Value dimensions relate significantly to relationship marketing outcomes, providing evidence for the nomological validity of the original scale. Research limitations/implications: Given the dynamic nature of the relationship value construct, future longitudinal research could offer useful insights on how value is created over time. Practical implications: Although internal cost reduction, which can ultimately lead to price reduction, should not be ignored, suppliers should focus on creating value through personal interaction, service quality, product enhancements and delivery efficiency. Originality/value: The findings provide support for Ulaga and Eggert's (2006a) conceptualisation, indicating that the relationship value is not merely a theoretical construct viewed on a high level of abstraction but rather can also be empirically measured. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on new public management and the funding of science and technology services to Great Britain government. During the past two decades a wave of public sector reform has swept through many OECD countries, and been pursued with vigor in Great Britain. Often characterized loosely as new public management, the change frequently embodies, inter alia, a commitment to downsizing the state, cost-cutting, marketization and competition, the devolution of executive functions to quasi-autonomous agencies and a commitment to customer-contractor and other quasi-commercial policy-making and management principles. Organizations are viewed as a chain of low-trust principal/agent relationships with the disaggregation of separable functions into quasi-contractual or quasi-market forms. Providers are thus deconcentrated into the minimum feasible sized agency, allowing users more scope to exit from one provider to another, thereby ostensibly promoting competition. First, the public sector becomes less distinctive from the private in terms of personnel, reward structures and methods of doing business. Second, the extent to which discretionary power over staff, contracts and money is limited by uniform and general rules of procedure is reduced.