Customer understanding and communication in new technology and research services: An empirical study from life science companies

This paper explores customer understanding and communication between drug developing biotechnology companies as customers and technology and research services providing companies in business-to-business (b-to-b) context. New services are needed when research is increasingly outsourced from pharmaceutical companies to service providers. Challenges in the development of customer understanding and communication are highlighted in the paper taking different phases of drug development process and pharmaceutical company´s size into consideration. Qualitative face-to-face interviews and literature review were used as research methods. Two service provider representatives and four representatives from small or medium sized drug developing biotechnology companies were involved in the study. This paper reveals that deeper partnership-like relationships could be possible especially in the early phases of drug development process if communication works well and trust is created. Discussions related to offering and customer needs are not always clear enough and communication about meaning of the results is often deficient. All this would be extremely important while fruitful communication deepens the customer relationship, creates trust and enables long-term relationships. Further study is needed especially about promoting and preventing factors for creation of trust and open communication.