Analyzing the Trust and Power Dynamics in MPB's Buyer-Seller Relations

This essay examines the critical role of trust and power dynamics in buyer-seller relationships, particularly within the context of MPB. It highlights how these dynamics influence cooperation, information sharing, and overall relationship quality. The essay discusses the four dimensions of power (information, market, expert, and legitimate-coercive) and their impact on MPB's performance. It also delves into Lewicki and Bunker's three stages of trust: calculus-based, knowledge-based, and identification-based trust, explaining how these stages contribute to stable relationships, conflict resolution, and long-term commitment between buyers and sellers. The essay concludes that trust is a core factor in fostering enduring buyer-seller relationships and driving repurchasing behavior at MPB.

Running head: TRUST AND POWER EQUATION IN MPB
Trust and Power Equation in MPB
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1TRUST AND POWER EQUATION IN MPB
Buyer-seller relationship has a key role in supplier satisfaction and plays a crucial role in
influencing the important components of a buyer and seller relationship, for instance,
cooperation, trust and compliance and conflict resolution. For an organization like MPB , buyers
and sellers cooperate in order to produce mutual benefit. Trust allows for an open sharing of
information but in certain cases, both the buyers and sellers are hesitant to share the information
for they fear for market loss. However, power is the component through which one party
possesses the potential to control and re-shape the decision variables of another party in a supply
chain management. Power dynamics is essential for buyer seller relationship and purchasing
power of a consumer plays a crucial role in influencing the consumer behavior. In bilateral
relationships, with the shrewd usage of power, one can influence and control other’s decisions.
Power is a four dimensional construct which will result in information, market and expert power
that will bear a positive impact on the MPB’s performance, where as legitimate-coercive power
may be negative for the firm’s performance (Chimhundu 2016). Expert power is essential in
buyer seller relationship to understand and achieve the joint goals and eradicates the possibilities
of unjustified behavior at the end of either of the parties thereby facilitating sales.

2TRUST AND POWER EQUATION IN MPB
Trust in a buyer-seller relationship can lead to a stable relationship which further
eliminates possibilities of conflicts ad minimizes uncertainties, induces a healthy relationship
between the buyer and seller which will enable a steady increase in the purchase intention.
These factors which are accentuated by Lewicki Bunker three stages of trust will encourage to
foster commitment and a long-term relationship between the buyer and seller (Dong et al. 2015).
In buyer and seller relationship there is no single and compact definition of trust, however, the
model developed by Lewicki and Bunker is crucial as it assesses the different aspects of trust at
different stages of buyer and seller relationship. In case of calculus based trust, the buyer
develops the expectancy that buying from an exchange partner will be equipped with more
advantages than buying from another party (Akrout 2015). Knowledge based trust is based on
the last transactions where both the parties generates a notion about each other’s behaviors. At
this stage, the person’s character comes into consideration which ensues a feeling of mutual trust
where through previous interaction where they have exchanged information about preferences
and perspectives and behavioral patterns. This establishes a mutual feeling of trust and the fact
that the previous transactions were successful between both the parties (Cuevas, Julkunen and
Gabrielsson 2015). The last part is identification based trust where the partners identify with
each other the movement from calculus based trust to identification based trust signifies a strong
framework of the buyer seller relationship. Trust is important as it helps the buyers to develop a
sense of reliability and integrity regarding the products and the sellers. Satisfaction factor is
intrinsically linked with trust in buyer seller relationship which can further give rise to re-
purchasing behavior among the customers. Therefore, trust can be the core factor is forming a
long-term relationship between the buyer-seller in MPB.

3TRUST AND POWER EQUATION IN MPB
Reference list:
Akrout, H., 2015. A process perspective on trust in buyer–supplier relationships.“Calculus” An
intrinsic component of trust evolution. European Business Review, 27(1), pp.17-33.
Chimhundu, R., 2016. Marketing store brands and manufacturer brands: Role of referent and
expert power in merchandising decisions. Journal of Brand Management, 23(5), pp.24-40.
Cuevas, J.M., Julkunen, S. and Gabrielsson, M., 2015. Power symmetry and the development of
trust in interdependent relationships: The mediating role of goal congruence. Industrial
marketing management, 48, pp.149-159.
Dong, X.L., Gabrilovich, E., Murphy, K., Dang, V., Horn, W., Lugaresi, C., Sun, S. and Zhang,
W., 2015. Knowledge-based trust: Estimating the trustworthiness of web sources. Proceedings of
the VLDB Endowment, 8(9), pp.938-949.