Reputation, trust and supplier commitment: the case of shipping company/seaport relations

Relationships between a supplier’s corporate reputation, trust in the supplier, co‐operation, buyer commitment, and willingness to undertake relationship‐specific investments were examined in the context of interactions between three UK seaports and a sample of 144 of their customer shipping firms. It emerged that the model proposed by the International Marketing and Purchasing Group performed well as a predictor of supplier/purchaser relationships within this sector. Seaports’ corporate reputations (as measured by the Fortune reputation index) significantly affected shippers’ desires for close relationships with particular ports, and acted as a quasi‐moderator of the impact of supplier trust on closeness. Reputation, moreover, constituted a pure moderator vis‐à‐vis the influences of trust on commitment and on relationship‐specific investments and adaptations of business systems. Additionally reputation modified the effects of experience (i.e. the period for which a shipper had been doing business with a specific port) on trust.