Business travel nowadays represents the second largest corporate cost and corporate travel managers are increasingly being pushed to better control and reduce business travel expenses mainly through the use of online Business Travel Management (BTM) solutions. However, internet advances and applications have resulted in profound changes in the structure, dynamics and inter-relations among the players in the BTM market, travel distribution players such as principals (hotels, airlines etc), intermediaries and business travellers ’ companies. As the impact of the internet in the B2B inter-firm relations has received little attention, this paper aims to investigate the impact of online BTM solutions on the BTM – businesses relations. So, the literature examining the impact of the internet on inter-firm relations is reviewed and a theoretical model is developed. The model is tested by gathering data from businesses using online BTM solutions and findings provide useful practical and theoretical implications.

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The purpose of this paper was to demonstrate empirically that attitudinal loyalty and satisfaction are divergent concepts. The results of this paper indicate that attitudinal loyalty is satisfaction driven and that satisfaction and attitudinal loyalty are related but divergent concepts. However had the analysis relied exclusively on correlation or exploratory factor analysis the empirical results would suggest convergent validity. Additionally attitudinal loyalty measures correlated as well with satisfaction measures as they did with each other. The satisfaction measures were more strongly associated with other satisfaction measures than they were with attitudinal loyalty measures. This paper contains a warning for researchers who rely solely on correlation and exploratory factor analysis for measuring divergent validity. Additionally it provides a research agenda for future research into the satisfaction loyalty relationship, which must incorporate additional dimensions of service loyalty.