An Intelligent Appraisal Model for Relationship Value in Business Markets

Inter-firm collaborative relationship has been treated as an important pattern of value creation. Value in relationship aroused massive interest of many researchers and managers. Most of research is of conceptual nature including definition and construct of relationship value. It is generally accepted that relationship value incorporates both economic and non economic value. However measurement of relationship value is criticized for its operational ambiguity on non economic part. It is also lack of effective technique to appraise hybrid value from economic and non economic part. The present paper identified the hybrid value as a decision theoretic value on the foundation of analyzing characteristics of relationship value. Case-based reasoning (CBR) was discussed as the better solution to clear the way for evaluating hybrid value involving economic factors indexed by quantitative data and psychological factors by qualitative data as usual. In retrieving process of CBR, ROMETHEE method was emphasized in similarity algorithm.