A vendor is something you select. Infrastructure is something you encounter.

distinction — attributed to Ben Erwin

Venue exclusivity means a meeting planner inherits a production provider she never chose, at rates she cannot audit, in the only ballroom that fits her attendees, the same way she encounters the loading dock or the ceiling height. That is a different relationship than the one a customer has with a vendor she actively selected and can replace. The distinction explains why an infrastructure company faces a trust problem a chosen vendor does not, since nobody feels loyalty to plumbing. The strategic question for a company built this way is whether it can earn, after the fact, the kind of relationship a chosen vendor gets to start with.

For distinguishing how customers relate to companies they picked versus companies imposed on them by circumstance.

venue-exclusivity, vendor-relationship, trust, structural-position