Dissertation: A third party actor can help initiate a business relationship in professional services 

In knowledge intensive professional services, creating new business relationships between seller and buyer is often challenging: a service frequently constitutes a customised, expensive investment whose quality the customer finds it difficult to measure in advance. In addition, it is characteristic of professional services that active marketing activities – such as advertising – are viewed as unreliable. For this reason, they aim at a more discreet form of customer acquisition.

In such cases, initiation of a business relationship may be promoted by the experiences of earlier customers and other third party actors, communicated through reputation, references and word of mouth. A customer can aim to reduce its risks by acquiring information on the service provider through any sources it considers reliable, such as earlier clients. Correspondingly, the selling party can demonstrate its know-how by using satisfied customers or successful service projects as references.

In her dissertation, Aarikka-Stenroos analyses reference communication. In other words, she studies the kinds of information contained in references, word of mouth and reputation, and how this information is passed between parties. The study’s results suggest that references, reputation and word of mouth are parallel but distinctive communication mechanisms between three actors. These mechanisms transmit reference information which is based on earlier experiences of the service provider, product or service forming the content of exchange, on the compatibility of the parties, and on details required in decision-making and problem-solving.

The dissertation also examines the identity of third parties who generate references, word-of-mouth and reputation, and how these third party actors promote the initiation of a business relationship. According to the dissertation, third parties can be individuals (e.g. a familiar engineer), companies (a certain company as a reference), communities (the engineers of a given sector) or artefacts (e.g. a previously planned factory). The results indicate that third parties of this kind can communicate information about other parties and possible solutions, facilitate communication between the parties, pass on relationships and contacts, accelerate the start-up process, reinforce the necessary trust, bring together suitable parties and help them adapt to one another, and demonstrate the form which collaboration might take. In this way, they can promote the initiation of a business relationship.

With the help of Aarikka-Stenroos’s research results, both companies that do and do not offer professional services can develop their marketing, while client companies can make their purchase decision-making processes more effective, by taking advantage of the information and contact potential offered by third parties.

The dissertation material consists of qualitative, narrative interviews collected from knowledge intensive professional services such as technical planning, industrial design, corporate banking, law and advocacy services, and advertising planning. Other material included company reference materials and brochures, and various articles from the media discussing certain professional service companies or professionals.

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