Gandhi, MehakMehakGandhi2023-04-132023-04-132022-09-19https://www.alexandria.unisg.ch/handle/20.500.14171/108242Successful collaboration in B2B relationships is shown to play an increasingly important role in leveraging the capabilities for the firms and maximizing the value created for any given business exchange. This dissertation aims to build on the existing concepts of collaboration in three important contexts through three cumulative papers respectively focused on: (1) Expanding on the current knowledge of B2B collaboration through identifying the key elements of value co-creation between supplier and customer firms as a starting point for understanding collaboration. (2) Bringing in the context of an uncertain business environment and how strategic agility is relevant in collaboration with B2B customers to help identify the strategic choices that firms can make to navigate uncertainty in the B2B environment. (3) Making B2B collaboration relevant at the corporate strategy level by understanding how corporate strategy alignment with B2B customers through strategic account planning is crucial and the role of successful B2B collaboration in the same. The first paper addresses how B2B value co-creation is increasingly being regarded as an important reason for partner firms to engage in a B2B relationship, defines the key elements that constitute this process between the two firms based on the existing model for relational rents and regroups them across three levels for implementation of value co-creation. The main goal is to contribute to the current discussion on successful interfirm relationships, adding new dimensions to the existing perspectives on relational rents and B2B collaboration. The second paper focuses on the need for strategic agility in collaboration to navigate uncertain environments. This research shows that there are five different strategic choices that are derived from an S-Curve relationship between Collaboration Performance and the share-of-wallet with the customer - Improve, Protect, Boost, Optimize and Maintain, which can guide firms in setting the direction of their strategic actions and allocation of resources with B2B customers in challenging times. The third paper addresses the alignment between corporate strategy and B2B customer account planning, as the former often misses key inputs from strategic customers right from the strategy planning stage. Through our research of over 261 customer-supplier relationship cases, we identify the nine main barriers to alignment between corporate and customer strategy, while identifying the three strategic principles, nine barrier breaking actions and 18 key micro-practices enabled the success of the high-performing cases. The dissertation thus contributes to both research and practice.enUnternehmerischer GeschäftsverkehrBusiness-to-Business-MarketingEDIS-5219B2B customer strategystrategic collaborationBusiness relationshipscustomer-supplier relationshipsdoctoral thesis