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Trust in a business-to-business (B2B) context is frequently cited but often poorly understood. Yet its importance continues to grow as a central driver of successful and enduring B2B relationships.

Research into B2B trust demonstrates that trust is not static. It is dynamic and can be proactively developed. Recent doctoral research has offered a refined definition of trust in a B2B context:

“The willingness to be vulnerable to another party and the decision to engage in actions based upon an interpretation of their ability, credibility, and the expectations of mutual value exchange over time”
(Hollyoake, 2020).

Building on this foundation, the Applied Marketing Research Group aims to extend this work by exploring trust development more deeply through the lens of ‘boundary spanner relationships’. Specifically, the research focuses on the pivotal role boundary spanners play in the development of relational trust.

For those unfamiliar with the term, boundary spanners are, in simple terms, individuals or agents who operate across organisational boundaries, working on both sides of a relationship. According to Möllering (2002), boundary spanners are responsible for managing the “leap of faith” inherent in trust development, including the identification, mitigation, and management of risk (see Figure 1).

The trust building potential of ‘Boundary Spanners’:

Neal, Neal and Brutzman (2022), in ‘The activities boundary spanners undertake in the development of trust-based relationships’, identify a range of definitions associated with boundary spanning. They describe it as work that enables exchange between the production and use of knowledge in order to support evidence-informed decision-making within a specific context.

Similarly, Bednarek et al. (2018) define boundary spanning as facilitating the exchange between knowledge creation and its application, while Posner and Cvitanovic (2019) emphasise the role of individuals or organisations that actively enable this process.

Crucially, the boundary spanner role is not governed by a fixed or prescriptive set of rules (Perrone, Zaheer, & McEvily, 2003). Instead, it is often open to interpretation and shaped by multiple, complex and sometimes conflicting pressures (Kahn et al., 1964). As a result, trust development cannot be predicted solely on the basis of formal role definitions. To understand how trust emerges, we must look beyond job titles and examine how roles are enacted in practice.

Boundary spanners play a critical mitigating role in the transition from relational intent (intangible) to relational action (tangible). By reducing perceived vulnerability, they lessen the magnitude of the “leap of faith” required to move a relationship forward. This supports earlier work by Näslund (2012, p.23), who suggests that while interpretation and expectation are largely cognitive processes, the leap of faith relies more heavily on affective elements.

Herein lies a paradox.

While the theory of trust development appears relatively straightforward, its application in practice is far more complex.

The original doctoral research into B2B relational trust provided insights into the dynamic nature of trust, how it operates, its impact on B2B relationships and how it can be proactively developed. This work led to the development of the B2B Trust DNA™ Model (Figure 1).

Existing literature addresses several aspects of the boundary spanner’s role in managing the progression of relationships. When considered alongside the Trust DNA™ Model, two key themes begin to emerge:

• The activities boundary spanners undertake to mitigate actual or perceived risk when moving from intangible to tangible trust and the actors involved in this process.
• The specific elements of the boundary spanner role on both the customer and supplier sides that contribute to the development of trust-based relationships.

Exploring these themes offers an opportunity to better understand the nuances of the boundary spanner role and how it can be deliberately leveraged to strengthen trust and improve relationships. Understanding how trust is built can inform capability and competency development, role design and targeted development programmes for both early-career professionals and those already operating in boundary-spanning roles. It also has wider organisational and leadership implications, particularly where leaders themselves act as boundary spanners or are responsible for leading inter-organisational relationships.

The Applied Marketing Research Group is currently at the initial stage of this next phase of research into relationship trust building. The project is designed to generate insight into the two themes outlined above and will be conducted in three stages:

1. Qualitative shaping
2. Qualitative refining
3. Quantitative defining

If you would like to learn more about the project or explore opportunities to get involved, please feel free to contact Dr Ed Little, Dr Mark Hollyoake or Professor Mario Vafeas.

Professor Mario Vafeas discusses his recent, open access paper Boredom in the Creative Studio published in the Journal of Advertising

For several years, I have been conducting research in the creative industries. Initially, this started as an investigation of factors influencing the quality of client-agency relationships. More recently, I have been exploring the ‘dark side’ of long-term business relationships. Besides the potential for complacency, opportunism, and inertia, I was fascinated to uncover the potential negative impact that boredom can have on creative personnel and, consequently, on the client-agency relationship.

Despite being a common phenomenon in the workplace, boredom is poorly understood. This could be because it is less visible, and considered less harmful, than other negative emotions such as anxiety and stress. And yet, being bored can lead to reduced task performance and – when it becomes chronic rather than transient – negative wellbeing. Furthermore, there is evidence to suggest that creative personality types are more prone to boredom than others.

To increase understanding of the causes and consequences of boredom in a creative environment, I conducted 32 one-to-one interviews with senior and junior creatives from a variety of marketing communications agencies in the UK. I used Control-Value Theory (CVT) – a theory that was developed in the education sector – to frame the research. CVT proposes that an individual’s motivation and behaviour are influenced by positive or negative emotions. These emotions result from an individual’s subjective assessment of personal control over, and perceived value of, activities.

Control appraisals

The research findings showed that three factors affected control appraisals. The first was poor quality briefing by the client which led creatives to conclude that they had insufficient control over the job to produce an effective outcome:

” We frequently find that clients can’t articulate what they want. You can’t solve a problem when you don’t know what it is you are meant to be solving. You end up with totally bored and disengaged creatives.” (Creative director)

The second was a lack of task autonomy. When a brief is too constraining or too prescriptive, it reduces a creative’s ownership and desire to invest in the task:

“Sometimes the decisions are made for you. You’re spoon fed everything. If you’re not given the freedom to be creative, you get bored. The enthusiasm goes and your heart’s not in it.” (Creative director) 

The third was poor quality performance feedback from the client. This included infrequent feedback and a lack of transparency:

“You’re far more likely to put effort into impressing the client if you feel like your work is appreciated. When they say nothing, you think ‘why bother?’ ” (Graphic designer)

“Boredom is a consequence of being told ‘that’s not good enough’ but not being told why. The desire to please dissipates.” (Creative director)

Value appraisals

The findings showed that two factors affected value appraisals.

The first was task challenge.

There were two elements to this: repetitive work and identity threat. Repetitive work is underchallenging. It has no intrinsic value (there is a lack of interest) and no extrinsic value (it will do nothing to enhance the career of the creative):

“When creatives are asked to dedicate their lives to one client and essentially one brief, year after year, they just regurgitate the same stuff, and it gets very boring.” (Art director)

Ironically, these are often the jobs that generate substantial revenue. As one creative director put it: “these are the meat and potato jobs that keep the agency going.” Related to being underchallenged is identity threat. Several participants identified two personality types, variously called ‘climbers and campers’ or ‘hunters and farmers’. The climbers/hunters have a strong sense of identity and a clear idea of the type of work that nurtures their identity. They see no value in under-challenging work and consider it a threat to their identity:

“The climbers know what they want in life. They love creating big ideas. The mundane is for someone else. Give them the wrong job and you can see their boredom, their physical agitation.“ (Creative director)

The second factor which influences value appraisals is task meaningfulness.

Where there is a poor fit between the person and the task, there is the potential for boredom:

“I did some work for an adoption agency. I had a real desire to produce a great outcome. On the other hand, when it’s something I can’t connect with, like we had a client in the defence sector, I soon get bored.” (Graphic designer)

Interestingly, a good relationship with the client has a mitigating effect on mundane work and boredom: 

“If there’s a good relationship with the client then, no matter how mundane the work, or how many times they ask you to move a comma and then, an hour later, move it back again, you’ll do it because you love the client.” (Graphic designer)

Regarding the interaction between control and value appraisals, the findings suggest that, even when levels of task control are high, if the value appraisal is low, boredom will still occur:

“There are some projects where we already know the coordinates. We’ve worked on it for the last five years. We know the brand, what works, and what the client likes. There’s no challenge. We become stale, bored, and the result is monotone.” (Creative director)

The consequences of boredom have both low and high activation characteristics. The former had an impact on intensity and duration of effort. Besides reduced effort, some will seek distraction from boredom by, for example, listening to a podcast while working. Not only can this diversion of cognitive resources result in error, it can also have a negative impact on organisational culture:

“They don their headphones at nine am and take them off at five pm. There’s no point them being in the studio. The studio feeds off banter and noise. It stimulates the creative mind and creates a dynamic in the studio. People who disconnect do nothing to build a vibrant and creative environment.” (Creative director)

A more harmful consequence is antisocial behaviour. This is visible in the ‘climbers/hunters’ whose identity is threatened:

“Ask them to do the wrong job and their boredom and frustration becomes very evident. It cascades down to the juniors in the team. It’s pervasive and you can feel productivity across the team begin to slide.” (Creative director)

Mitigating boredom

With regard to mitigating against the negative impact of boredom, job rotation can be a solution, but where this is impractical, re-framing an old problem to challenge the perception that problem boundaries and solutions are pre-determined can help. Highlighting the prosocial contribution of a task can increase value perceptions. Furthermore, peer appreciation leads to positive affect, enhancing an individual’s motivation.

Although clients might argue that the emotions of the creative team are not their concern, they should be cognizant of the impact their actions have on creative output. A high-quality brief, creative autonomy, and regular and transparent feedback will enhance a creative’s sense of control over a job. The power of relational goodwill to counteract boredom and maintain engagement, even during mundane tasks, is striking. It underlines the importance of nurturing the client-agency relationship for mutual benefit.

This blog is written by Dr Dan Knox and Dr Ed Little

Special-Interest Holidays in the Experience Economy

We all need a break now and again, but why? And what do we do when we get one? We undertook a research project designed to understand the motivations for the consumption of special-interest tourism and events experiences services among UK consumers.  We focused particularly on such special-interest categories as educational trips, participatory sports training, fundraising expeditions, thrill-seeker experiences, celebrity meet and greets, and creative vacations incorporating such activities as painting, cooking, wellness, or yoga. The data gathered in a survey of 2000 respondents show substantial numbers of consumers interested in unusual, spectacular or unique short-break experiences that align with their personal values and interests. The demand for more spectacular experiences is shown in this research to be related to attitudes, personalities and demographic factors – particularly age and gender.

Emotional Clusters: Comfort vs. Intensity

Analysis revealed that emotional responses to short-break experiences grouped into two key clusters which we have labelled ‘feet up’ and ‘foot down’.  The `Feet up’ cluster is associated with feelings of satisfaction, relaxation, joy and fulfilment, the `Foot down’ cluster with the arguably more powerful emotional responses of surprise, adrenaline and love. The contrast between these clusters is best described by the degree of intensity associated with the activities, distinguishing between ‘comfort-seeking’ and ‘thrill-seeking’. We also explored the relationships between emotional responses, personality types, age and gender. It should be noted that these categories are not mutually exclusive and that people can move between them as they take different trips in any short period of time. 

Gender and Emotional Stimulation

Key findings include the fact that women were significantly more likely than men to have emotional motivations and responses to their holidays. There were statistically significant differences between men and women in the strength of feelings of excitement, love, surprise, joy, satisfaction, trust and fulfilment, with women scoring more highly on all of these.  A heightened female responsiveness to emotional stimuli can be further identified in relation to the thrill-seeking and comfort-seeking categories as women were most likely to score highly in relation to both. Female consumers are both the most comfort-seeking and the most thrill-seeking of tourists and travellers in the contemporary UK. Though men were more likely to be higher scorers than women, the highest scorers on thrill-seeking tended to be women. It is possible that higher emotional intelligence and responsiveness of women explains their preponderance in the higher-scoring groups for each of foot down and feet up profiles.

Slowing Down, Age and the “Mid-Life Crisis”

Unsurprisingly, perhaps, older consumers were more likely to report “comfort” related responses than “intensity” related, and there was also a clear tendency for older consumers to be less interested in special-interest activities. It was found that the extent to which consumers value comfort vs. intensity in their emotional experiences of trips changes as they age. Older respondents had a greater tendency to value comfort over intensity but more detailed analysis indicates that these tendencies vary in ways we might not expect, with a steady growth of comfort-seeking during the 30s and 40s, but a resurgence of foot down in the 50s for many consumers. This is suggestive of the mid-life crises or changing attitudes as people age – perhaps youth really is just a lifestyle choice.

Feet up overtakes foot down during the approach to the age of 40, though it is a rise in the enjoyment of feet up rather than a fall in the enjoyment of foot down that drives this. Consumers appear to start to change their motivations as they approach 40 and we would expect this pattern to continue from this point onwards. The crossover between foot down and feet up occurs in the years of the early-to-mid-40s.  Comfort-related motivations on average overtake intensity-related motivations at the age of 43 – more specifically at 42 for women and at 45 for men.  

It was also found that the association of feet up with an enjoyable holiday does not simply rise steadily after this as we might expect.  Instead, there is a small resurgence of thrill-seeking and a dip in comfort- seeking in the early 50s before the decline of foot down and rise in feet up return to their expected trajectories again as people enter their 60s. This suggests that there is a renewed vigour among travellers in their 50s, perhaps a rebirth or recognition that time and opportunity might be passing them by.  There are probably two processes at work here – the realisation of the passage of time inspiring work towards completion of bucket lists and a renewed wanderlust among consumers in their middle-aged period perhaps following changes to family and home life.

Implications for the tourism services industry

Unsurprisingly, this research showed that motivations for special-interest, leisure experiences are many and varied. However, it was found that clear distinctions could be made between different types of experience, which in turn can be linked to differing personality types, age groups and genders. As well as being useful in the marketing of special interest tourism services, these findings have broader implications for the sector. The story of travel and tourism in British outbound markets over the past two decades has been one of the growth of independent travel as consumers have increasingly booked their own flights and hotels online, made all of their own arrangements and effectively operated as their own travel agency.  This trend is unlikely to disappear but elements of the special interest market simply cannot be independently booked where there are issues of access or exclusivity.  Booking a meeting with a celebrity or a foot down experience are not currently equivalent to booking a flight or an international train, and are not likely to become so in the near future.  This is an opportunity for tour operators and travel agencies to regain some market share with innovative offerings that are otherwise difficult to access.

Alan Tapp, Professor of Marketing at Bristol Business School, UWE Bristol, is currently advising local government on how behavioural science and social marketing theory can be applied in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

In February 2021, Professor Tapp was briefed by South Gloucestershire Council Public Health & Wellbeing Division, and Public Health Dorset which serves Dorset and Bournemouth, Christchurch, and Poole, to use his expertise in behaviour change to inform local government activities aimed at encouraging compliance with COVID-19 regulations. The project focused in particular on social distancing between 16-29-year olds, an age group deemed less likely to adhere to government advice on social distancing.

Professor Tapp directed a qualitative research study to better understand the attitudes and behaviours of young people at the height of the second wave of the pandemic in the UK. Alan commissioned YouGov, a well-known polling company, for this work. YouGov undertook online mini-groups with 3 or 4 respondents and an online forum that allowed a larger group of 20+ respondents to write down their experiences of the pandemic and their lives, and then move to their views about how they and ‘other people’ behave.

The findings from this study, which highlighted how young people felt demonised and targeted by the media, informed Professor Tapp’s brief to Public Health Dorset’s advertising agency to create a communication campaign specifically targeted to this age group.

One element of the communications campaign developed by the agency was a set of 45-second videos for YouTube, Facebook, and other social media platforms. A key consideration was that the campaign needed to be informative, authoritative, and credible, but also simultaneously engaging and interesting so as to encourage liking and sharing.

Following on from this project, Professor Tapp is now engaged with a second project regarding the willingness of the public to self-administer regular lateral flow tests. This project is aimed at all UK adults, as authorities are trying to increase the take-up of testing and asking people to self-isolate if they have a positive result. This is being met with some reticence from the public because, while the down side to testing and self-isolating is obvious (potential loss of income and freedom just as legal restrictions are reducing), the benefits are much less clear. Whilst there is always the appeal to people to test for the good of others rather than just themselves, in self-contained societies such as the UK this is arguably less likely to be successful than a campaign based on self-interest.

Professor Tapp is directing a second stage of research to fully understand the extent of resistance to self-testing. Once this has been discovered, another creative campaign to encourage the public to engage with testing will be created as we transition into the cold and flu season of Autumn and Winter.

As this project progresses, Professor Tapp is really keen to share findings with other regional authorities as he really believes there is a strong need for greater data sharing and transparency so that we can all benefit from research such as this.

To find out more contact Alan on alan.tapp@uwe.ac.uk

Professor Tim Hughes’s experience of playing and performing blues music got him thinking about how an individual’s happiness or subjective well-being is often co-created with many other people. Given a long-term interest in co-creation of value Tim, together with Associate Professor Mario Vafeas, have recently been examining co-creation of happiness as an area that is not covered in the existing marketing literature.

In a recently published article in Marketing Theory, Hughes and Vafeas discuss co-creation in a musical context. The sound coming from an instrument depends on the quality and set-up of the instrument and the skills and feel of the player (co-creation with instrument suppliers and technicians). Learning an instrument is often facilitated by regular lessons (co-creation with tutors or video material on the internet). In performance, a feeling of happiness is co-created with the audience and experienced in applause and feedback. Music clubs are typically social events involving connecting with other people relating strongly to co-creation of well-being.

From face-to-face to digital

Then came the 2020 pandemic, resulting in sustained lock-downs, limiting face-to- face interactions and leading to an unprecedent change in the behaviour of much of the population with the widespread use of digital platforms, such as Zoom, for interacting with each other. This prompted Hughes and Vafeas together with Dr Ed Little to conduct a research study aimed at exploring individual’s co-creation using digital platforms for work and leisure interactions in relation to these individual’s perceptions of their own happiness/well -being during lockdown periods. The research which has not yet been submitted for publication, involved two stages, initial interviews to explore respondents’ views which then informed the development of an online questionnaire for the second stage of research. The survey in the second stage resulted in 178 useable responses.

The most important finding is that respondents who used digital platforms gave significantly higher wellbeing scores than those who did not. This finding applied both in terms of relatedness, that is the individual’s sense of connection people have with others and in terms of eudonic wellbeing, that is their evaluation of their self -actualisation and functioning. Human relationships are highly important to human happiness but the pandemic lockdown severely limited the ability for people to meet up with others in the traditional face-to-face manner that they have been able to for most of their adult life-times. The use of digital platforms went some way to make up for this. Comments on the role of digital platforms related particularly to the connection to family and friends and the ability to maintain some social activities. Despite this, interaction through digital platforms was rated significantly lower than face-to-face interaction for both work and social meetings. While digital platforms were effective for getting things done, they were seen as lacking the emotional connection with other participants of face-to-face.

What about the future?

A consideration of the role of co-creation in human happiness poses important questions for social policy in the light of the social challenge of loneliness and exclusion amongst aging populations. A better understanding of the role that digital platforms have in supporting the co-creation of happiness has potentially significant implications for the future. On a personal note. Tim Hughes continued to perform to virtual audiences on Zoom throughout the pandemic lockdowns, taking part in sessions that involved both local, national and international participants. Tim feels that this opportunity greatly helped in maintaining his sense of well-being over the period and indeed led him to connect with other performers who he would never have met face-to-face.