Interdependency, Contracting, and Relational Behavior in Marketing Channels

Abstract

The dependency structure between wholesale-distributors and their major suppliers is posited to influence the type of contract—explicit and normative—used. In turn, dependency structure and type of contract is hypothesized to influence wholesale-distributor performance. This process occurs both directly and indirectly through some intermediate constructs, such as long-term orientation, relationship length, and relational behavior. The authors investigate three dependency structures: wholesaler dependent on supplier, supplier dependent on wholesaler, and high bilateral dependency. They obtain empirical support for many of the hypothesized linkages.

Transaction‐Specific Investments, Relational Norms, and ERP Customer Satisfaction: A Mediation Analysis*

“…Drawing upon Heide and John (1992), we measure relational norms as a second-order structure, with flexibility (FLEX), information exchange (INFOX), and solidarity (SOLIDAR) as the underlying constructs. Indicator questions are drawn from several previous studies including Heide and John (1992), Lusch and Brown (1996), and Griffith and Myers (2005) and adapted to the ERP context of this study. For instance, given the importance of effective information exchange between the ERP vendor and customer for the maintenance and implementation of an ERP system and the fact that such information exchange could involve proprietary information, we ask whether an ERP customer/vendor would be willing to share proprietary information if such information would help the other party.…”

Disintermediation of travel agents in the hotel industry

“…The second macromotive factor to examine is the level of interdependence between channel members. Gundlach and Cadotte (1994) and Lusch and Brown (1996) suggest that if channel members have great stakes in the relationship, and both are dependent on each other for profit, retaliation would not be an attractive option to the parties involved. Instead, they would engage in constructive discussions to resolve their differences.…”

Managing Multiple Facets of Risk in New Product Alliances*

“…In particular, we created five new items for knowledge appropriation risk, four new items for performance risk, and four new items for relational risk. We developed five items based on Lusch and Brown (1996) to capture contractual governance and created four items based on Heide and John (1992) to measure normative governance.…”

“…Thus, the emergent perspective is that governance mechanisms can take place in a variety of forms, including, but not limited to, market versus nonmarket governance (Heide, 1994), formalization versus interfirm cooperation (Dahlstrom & Nygaard, 1999), among others. Despite their seeming disparities in construct labeling, two common forms of governance mechanisms, explicit contractual versus normative, come forward to represent these different governance choices (e.g., Lusch & Brown, 1996;Heide, 2003).…”

“…Explicit contractual governance involves a precise and detailed articulation in writing that specifies a firm's roles and obligations in relation to its partner. It further includes elements of prescience in that it attempts to explicitly state today how various situations that might occur in the future would be handled if they were to occur (Lusch & Brown, 1996). Alternatively, normative governance implies the use of social norms and relational components such as trust rather than legal devices to govern and manage interactions with partner firms (Heide & John, 1992).…”