"relationship", Or Market?

Private enterprises are products of China’s economic structural reform and have become the important component of our national economy development. The private entrepreneur as the person in charge of the private enterprise plays a unique role in enterprise development. Therefore, the study of the private entrepreneurs’behavior in the business process is very important.Based on the localization of "guanxi" theory, most scholars emphasized that the entrepreneurs tend to create a personal "guanxi" between their target objects and themselves through informal "guanxi" behaviors, so as to obtain benefits or maintain official relationship. But it can be found out that the existing literatures’research time mainly concentrated in the late1990s and early21st century, China’s market system is less complete in that period. And there were lack of researches of the behavior of entrepreneurs in recent years, even if there had specially discussion, the researches were mostly used the Western social network analysis theory and research framework.This paper focuses on the research of maintenance of customer relationship in order to study the private entrepreneurs’behavior more detailed. This study used unstructured interviews to research the small and medium-sized private entrepreneurs" behavior of maintaining customer relationship in the Z village which is in the north of Zhejiang province. The research conclusions are as follows:(1) The impact of "guanxi" which as a kind of instrumental means has been weakened to the maintenance of customer relationship for the small and medium-sized private entrepreneurs. The private entrepreneurs input low cost in the "interpersonal"" behavior of "guanxi"-oriented.(2) For the small and medium-sized private entrepreneurs, the "material" and "law" behaviors of market-oriented are the decisive means of maintaining customer relationships.(3) The behavior pattern of maintaining customer relationship of the small and medium-sized private entrepreneurs in the Z village is not "particularism" based on "guanxi"-oriented, but "universalism" based on market-oriented. This behavior pattern is the result of the combined effects of government behavior, market economy development and technological advancement.