The starting point for this study was the obvious "mismatch" between the dominating, consumer marketing-oriented way of approaching customer satisfaction on the one hand and our current understanding of industrial buyer-seller relationships and networks on the other. The purpose of this paper is to present a relational and contextual perspective on customer satisfaction and dissatisfaction in industrial markets. To illustrate the usefulness of the perspective, this paper presents a case study on the emergence of dissatisfaction in a buyer-. seller relationship within its network context in the software industry. On the basis of the three-level framework highlighted in this paper, i.e., the inner context of a buyer-seller relationship, the connected network of a buyer-seller relationship, and the outer context of the connected network, it is argued that it is possible to develop a richer understanding of the emergence of satisfaction in industrial markets. ©2000 Elsevier Science Inc. All rights reserved.