Research efforts to explain the buyer-seller transaction have evolved from economic utilitarian approaches to ones incorporating social and psychological approaches. Earlier research, for example, relied on transaction cost analysis to help and explain the firm’s engagement in business relationships with a focus on minimizing the direct and opportunity costs of exchange (Lambe, Wittmann, & Speckman, 2001; Rindfleisch & Heide, 1997). Transaction cost analysis, however, is limited in explaining many relationship-based exchanges, of longer terms in particular, that have become more recent business goals and strategies across industries. Such limitations motivated researchers to adopt social and psychological perspectives that could enrich explanations of the exchange relationship. Social exchange theory (hereafter, SET) is one such approach that has resulted in widespread applications in more recent marketing research (Lambe et al., 2001). In addition to economic outcomes of an exchange, SET allows marketers to model non-economic, social and psychological outcomes in understanding and predicting whether the exchange relationship will continue or not.

• Haemoon Oh(University of South Carolina, USA)
• Miyoung Jeong(University of South Carolina, USA)