Trust in International Marketing Relationships: A Retrospective

We write this retrospective piece on our article, “Trust and Performance in Cross-Border Marketing Relationships: A Behavioral Approach,” (Aulakh et al. 1996; hereafter, referred to as the ‘1996 Trust Paper’) after more than twenty-five years since its publication in the Journal of International Business Studies Special Issue on cooperative strategies in international business. We were honored that the article was selected for the special issue from the more than fifty papers presented at three conferences spread across the globe in 1996. Furthermore, we are heartened that the paper has continued to be cited regularly after all these years and by the breadth of the disciplinary journals in which it is cited. In this brief retrospective, we focus on the aspects of the model theorized and empirically tested in the 1996 Trust Paper that have stood the test of time, and others where the conceptualization and empirics were not as robust, given the subsequent theoretical and methodological advancements in the field. The objective here is not to provide a comprehensive review of the subsequent trust and alliance literature since the publication of the 1996 Trust Paper, but to take critical pieces of the model and evaluate their subsequent trajectories that have ensued.