The impacts of environmental uncertainty on socio-political structures and processes of a marketing channel: The case of the Canadian mad cow crisis

In Canada, after the first native case of Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE) was diagnosed in May 2003, the sentiments of helplessness and distress lead the way to increased trading disturbance, and mostly uncertainty inside the beef-marketing channel. The main objective of this research was to apply the political economy framework recognized in marketing literature to the BSE crisis that struck the Canadian beef-marketing channel in 2003. The inclusive nature of the political economy framework can support marketing researchers to fully comprehend many complex situations, along with extreme events that can represent an immediate threat to marketing channels. This research offers a more macro perspective on channel competitiveness in a global market.; Conceptually, this study investigates how the primary task environment of the focal channel member can be influenced by environmental uncertainty, and how this uncertainty can affect the internal polity, which contains both socio-political structures (power and dependence relations) and processes (conflictive and cooperative relations) of a marketing channel. A conceptual model based on the political economy framework explicates hypothesized relationships in the present research. The fundamental research approach selected was a field survey of respondents from a sample of cattle producers operating in the Canadian province of Saskatchewan. The research design employed was a structured questionnaire that was administered during personal interviews.; Based on the outcome of our empirical data, environmental capacity and dynamism that were subject to the present study significantly influence the primary task environment of cattle producers. In this study, some dimensions of environmental uncertainty emerge as being important factors of influence to the primary task environment of cattle producers. Also, findings for this research contribute to understand the power and dependence relations experienced by cattle producers, and how they are influenced by environmental uncertainty within their primary task environment. Food safety practices were integrated as a marketing aspect in an empirically-tested construct, perhaps for the first time in marketing literature. This study, though, failed to find an empirically significant relationship between primary task environmental uncertainty and socio-political processes.