Abstract
The purpose here is to explore in greater depth the inter-organizational relations in the dyad-model through discussions of customer information management. The focus of this paper is an examination of the firm’s information search capability, and the integrity between a firm and its customers in terms of “the tie to customers”. The strength of the tie to customers depends on teh degree of interaction with customers, and the number of intermediaries between the customer and the project members of the product development team (usually, R&D members). The results indicate the following: 1) the liaison to the customer should have technical knowledge, 2) there is a significant impact on the tie to the customer when the firm has a proactive attitude toward gathering customer information, and 3) the proactive attitude will lead to fitness between product components and will satisfy customer needs.
