Trust in industrial service relationships: behavioral consequences, antecedents and the moderating effect of the duration of the relationship Spiros P. Gounaris Lecturer of Marketing, Department of Management Science and Marketing, Athens University of Economics and Business, Athens, Greece Karin Venetis Strategy Director, Proximity-Amsterdam, Amstelveen, The Netherlands Keywords Trust, Service quality, Relationship marketing, Empirical study Abstract Building on previous studies which suggested that trust is a critical factor in facilitating exchange relationships, the authors investigate with empirically derived data the role of service quality and customer bonding as antecedents of trust in relatively newer vis-aÁ -vis a relatively mature relationship between the provider of business-to- businessservicesandtheclient.Thefindingspresentedhereshowthatthetimeelementis critical to the effect that both service quality and successful customer bonding bear in trust development. Furthermore, the results of the study suggest that not all dimensions of the quality of the service offered by the provider contribute equally in the provider's trustworthiness. Similarly, specific customer bonding techniques foster the extent to which the client trusts the service provider while others do not have an impact on the trustworthiness of the provider. Introduction In many occasions with business-to-business exchanges, a sale signals the beginning of a relationship, not the result. This tendency to form long-term relationships eventually leads to a state of inertia between the seller and the buyer, that is, an unwillingness of both parties to bring the relationship to an end unless something in the relationship goes exceptionally askew. It appears thus that developing trust in the relationship is a significant task for the business-to-business marketer in order to gain and sustain its clients Webster, 1991). Despite the importance of trust though, the scholarly inquiry on the issue is rather impeded in two ways. One is the limited academic research to empirically document the factors that affect trust in marketing exchange relationships. A second reason is the failure to distinguish trust from related factors, i.e. factors that precede the development of trust and influence it Moorman et al., 1993). On the contrary, with the notable exception of the study conducted by Morgan and Hunt 1994), many empirical studies assess The research register for this journal is available at http://www.emeraldinsight.com/researchregisters The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available at http://www.emeraldinsight.com/0887-6045.htm The authors would like to acknowledge the assistance provided by the two anonymous reviewers and the editor in improving the quality of this manuscript State of inertia Limited academic research 636 JOURNAL OF SERVICES MARKETING, VOL. 16 NO. 7 2002, pp. 636-655, # MCB UP LIMITED, 0887-6045, DOI 10.1108/08876040210447351 An executive summary for managers and executive readers can be found at the end of this issue