Doney & Cannon 1997 (JoM) — B2B trust; salesperson trust acts only indirectly through firm trust; past performance does selection work

Claim: Doney and Cannon (1997) distinguished between trust in the supplier firm and trust in the salesperson, and identified five cognitive processes through which industrial buyers form trust. From a survey of more than 200 purchasing managers:

• Trust in the salesperson influences anticipated future interaction only indirectly, through trust in the supplier firm.
• After controlling for previous experience and supplier performance, neither salesperson trust nor firm trust predicts current supplier selection — they predict future interaction. Past performance does the selection work.
• Doney & Cannon did NOT empirically find a significant relationship between supplier-firm reputation (as a separate construct from performance) and trust, despite predicting one theoretically.

Source: Doney, P. M., & Cannon, J. P. (1997). "An Examination of the Nature of Trust in Buyer-Seller Relationships." Journal of Marketing 61(2): 35–51. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/002224299706100203

Confidence: Verified.

For Candid: Two operative implications:

1. A cold pitch into a GC with a working incumbent will lose absent a precipitating failure. Current selection is driven by past performance, not by the new vendor's appeal. Pitches should be structured to be ready when the precipitating failure occurs, not to win against an actively-working incumbent.
2. The decisive arena is anticipated future interaction. Earning a place in the consideration set — not closing the sale today — is what trust actually buys.