Book excerpt: Strategic Alliances and Marketing Partnerships will help you to understand how partnerships function and how you can manage them more effectively and efficiently. Based on solid research and dealing with key topics such as supply chain management, marketing channels and relationship management, it identifies the key factors that determine partnering excellence. Whatever the nature of the relationship - whether outsourcing, strategic alliances or co-manufacturing, there are eight distinctive relationship types identified by the authors to help managers optimize their business to business partnerships. With case studies from prominent, global organizations such as Walmart, Toyota, General Motors and Dell, Strategic Alliances and Marketing Partnerships will help you to understand the problems that affect partnering and how to make effective management decisions to improve both the relationship and productivity.