The Study On Commitment In Distributor-Manufacturer Relationship

Commitment is a crucial basis of business exchange, which influences and determines the interfirm exchange behaviors. It is the essence for firms to maintain a persistent business relationship. Many overseas scholars have viewed commitment as an important facet of relationship exchange research. The determinants of distributors'relationship commitments, commitment model and the comprehensive evaluation method are mainly investigated, which provides enterprises a sound method on how to build long-term business relationship to implement strategy alliance. This paper is mainly divided into two parts: theory analysis and empirical research. The theory analysis part has synthesized relevant literatures, and studied various kinds of motives and influence factors of distributor-manufacturer commitment. The main factors and research hypothses that influence Chinese distributor's relationship commitments have been put forward from the manufacturers'angle of view, and the preliminary model of distributor's relationship commitment has also been constructed. Then, 8 kinds of comprehensive evaluation schemes for commitment are proposed. The empirical part mainly examines the research hypotheses and commitment models by the means of enterpriser and expert interviews together with questionnaires. From the results of empirical research, the model is then revised to disclose the real commitment mechanism of distributors to manufacturers. Besides, the suitable comprehensive evaluation system of relationship commitment is built basing on automobile industry,so that disturber's relationship commitment can be evaluated more scientifically and more effectively. The detailed research work and conclusions are as follows: (1) Determine the main factors influencing the Chinese distributor's relationship commitment. The theories of social exchange, relationship marketing, resource dependence, transfer cost, and environment uncertainty in marketing field are taken as analysis bases. By analyzing and synthesizing the related literatures, it comes to the elementary conclusion that the determinants of distributor's relationship commitments are: trust, dependence, coercive power, non-coercive power, communications, continuity, idiosyncratic investment, and product salability. The reliability and validity of 220 valid samples is tested by using statistical analyzing tools. Then, after purifying the 8 determinants'clauses by CITC testing, doing the factor analyses and sample inadequacy testing, and analyzing the relativity of commitment and its 8 determinants, the final determinants are then revised as: trust, dependence, coercive power, non-coercive power, communications, idiosyncratic investment, product salability and ease of sales. (2) Construct the Chinese distributor's relationship commitment model. Based on the analysis of the determinants of distributor's relationship commitment, several research hypotheses are suggested and a preliminary commitment model is built. The industries of engineering mechanism, automobile, pesticide, pharmacy, medical equipment, and steel are the empirical research background. Statistical analyses are finished by using SPSS10.0 to test the supporting degree of empirical evidence to original research hypotheses and commitment model. Based on that, the commitment model is modified, and finally, the element "product salability"is split into two indexes of "product salability"and "ease of sale", and the items to describe every determinant are also checked and revised. (3) Build a comprehensive evaluation system of Chinese distributor relationship commitment, and advance a method to evaluate the commitment level scientifically and effectively. The Chinese automobile industry is chosen as the empirical research subject. By applying the comprehensive evaluation principle and methodology and taking into account of characteristic of commitment structural model, nonlinear weighting and principal component analysis means are adopted as comprehensive evaluation models. 8 evaluation schemes are proposed by using the "difference driven"principle. The principal component analysis is finally fixed as a suitable method to comprehensively evaluate the Chinese distributor's relationship commitments.