The impact of the internet on business is increasing worldwide. Business-to-business transactions account for over 80 percent of all transactions conducted over the internet. There are many nations in terms of using the internet in both business-to-customer (B2C) and business-to-business (B2B) settings. Recently, the focus of e-commerce has shifted from B2C ecommerce to the effective use of e-commerce tools to make business processes and B2B relationships more efficient.



While practitioners are realizing this potential for using the internet to build profitable, long-term relationships with their trading partners, this topic has received little consideration from marketing scholars. Moreover, the value of a high quality relationship, particularly the relationship between a service provider and their customers, is noteworthy in the service sector.

Customers often rely on the credibility of service providers and their previous experiences with them due largely to the intangible nature of services. Next, the production of many services requires that customers and service providers interact with one another. Customers' perceptions of the quality of the relationship with a service provider may be commensurate with the quality of the service itself. Thus a strong relationship between customers and the service provider engenders trust that is necessary for customers to commit to the service.

Essentially, we argue that relationship quality between trading partners and their business performance is enhanced through the use of the internet, with the internet affecting technical bonds more than social bonds. In the last five years, internet marketing literature has increased dramatically as a result of the rapid adoption of the internet in marketing practice. The bulk of the early practitioner's literature on internet marketing was aimed at telling entrepreneurs how to go about establishing a place in cyber market space, such as how to set up a web page. In the 1990s, attention among scholars focused on the revolutionary impact of internet technologies on the marketing discipline. Attention in the literature has focused on the revolutionary impacts of internet on the marketing discipline.

Some scholars have argued that the internet has created a new marketing arena, moving organizations closer to their customers. Others have even posed the question of whether a new marketing paradigm is required in an era of increasing electronic business. However, most of the literature agrees with the notion that the internet can be placed in the technological context of emerging interactive marketing technologies.

It is one of the most important marketing tools because it has the potential to facilitate relationships in both B2C and B2B contexts. Business-to-business (B2B) internet marketing includes the use of all three forms of e-commerce (internet, intranet and extranet) for purchasing goods and services, buying information and consulting services, and submitting requests for proposals and receiving proposals. The B2B internet based technologies provide effective and efficient ways in which corporate buyers can gather information rapidly about available products and services, evaluate and negotiate with suppliers, implement order fulfillment over communication links and access post-sales services.

From the supplier's side, marketing, sales, and service information is also readily gathered from customers. This application of internet-based systems for improving supply chain performance forms the basis for B2B e-commerce. The pace of change in this area has been rapid, making it difficult for companies to examine thoroughly the advantages and disadvantages of different ways of managing inter-firm relationships. From the scant internet/relationship marketing literature and the findings discussed above, the final outcome of the convergent interviewing methodology - a new theoretical framework - was developed