The Study On Agricultural Products Marketing Channel Conflict

China is the biggest country in terms of agricultural products production and consumption, with the consequence of the largely increase of agricultural products circulation and the urgent necessity of the smooth operation of agricultural marketing channel.Currently agricultural marketing channel conflict is still common and serious in China,which seriously blocks the development of agricultural products marketing and the income growth of peasants.Furthermore,it directly influences the realization of the supply and demand equilibrium of agricultural products and even results in the insufficient supply of certain products. Unfortunately there are only a very few high quality research papers on China's agricultural products marketing channel conflict,the gap between marketing practice and theoretical research ha proven the importance of carrying out research in this field.Based on questionnaire and interviewing and observation,this paper analyzed agricultural products channel conflict and control in China combined with the utility of quantitative and case study approach.Firstly,this paper examined the mentality of conflict of channel members by the utilizing quantitative research method.The research results show that there are 4 types of conflict mentalities in the marketing channel:tit-for-tat conflict mentality,contingence conflict mentality, taking peace as priority and making concession conflict mentality,and vary with each individual conflict mentality.Generally more intensive conflict mentality resulted in more frequent and intensified channel conflict.The channel member could be classified as four groups with regard to what kinds of conflict mentality they owned,with the most members staying in the tit-for-tat conflict mentality and the least in the taking peace as priority and making concession conflict mentality group.Secondly,channel conflict causes were summarized as the following five types:penetrating others' market and goal divergence,contract sense,function issues,stocking and products returning,market situation judgment and short-term interest.Within the entire channel conflict reasons the first one cased the most frequent conflict.A comparative study about the channel conflict reasons in China and in western country channel shown that there were more types of conflict reasons in Chinas' channel,and structural rather than attitude factors resulted in more channel conflict in China.For western country channel the situation was just the opposite.Thirdly,the paper pointed out that that there were 6 types of channel power in the agricultural products marketing channel in China:reward power,coercive power,referent power,expert power and legitimate power as well as information power.Furthermore,these 6 types of power can be grouped as aggressive power and non-aggressive power.The difference between China's channel and those of western countries was that in China's channel,the aggressive power was composed of coercive power and legitimated power,and sometimes it was used combined with expert power, while in western countries it was compose only of corrective power.Furthermore,the Chanel in China had few members owning strong management capabilities,which makes expert power a scarce and precious power in channel.Fourthly,the paper argued that the channel conflict development process can be generalized as follows:attraction-competition-becoming divided-integration-individual level conflict-group level conflict.Imperatively coordinated associations(ICAs) was the basic platform of channel inflict.The process for channel conflict to transform from latent conflict to manifest conflict is composer of 2 parallel stages:one is that the channel members should gradually realize what are their interests,in which interest develops into latent interest and then into manifest interest; another one is that channel members with same interest should gradually united as conflict group, which experience the process of quasi group develops into interest,and then into interest group.Fifthly,the paper examined the solutions to channel conflict with the discoveries that there were five kinds of solutions in channel:communicating with business partners,the third party mediation,and establishing conduct regulation complied by all channel members,giving benefits to business partners or its managers,considering business partners' interest.The most common solutions used by channel members currently was communicating with business partners,the third party mediation was the most effective solution to channel conflict,and the solution of giving benefits to business partners or its managers had the least effectiveness to channel conflict.When a primary social relation existed between channel members,they tended to use the solution of giving benefits to business partners or its managers,and tented to ignore other member's interest.Sixthly,the joint effects of conflict mentality and causes and channel satisfaction and conflict function,the joint effects of channel power and conflict causes and channel satisfaction,the joint effects of conflict causes and solutions and channel conflict intensity were discussed,based on which some specific suggestion on how to solve channel conflict were provided.Possible innovation of this paper include:For research approach,factor analysis plus K-means cluster analysis were used to explore the relation among channel conflict variables,along with the utility of case study approach to disclose channel conflict process.Current research on agricultural product channel conflict seldom use these research methods.For theoretical construction,the paper discovered the four types of channel conflict mentalities and five types of conflict causes,and found that the aggressive power was composed of coercive power and legitimated power.These were new theoretical contributions compared with current related researches.