The Impact Of Relationship Learning On Channel Performance: An Experiential Study Of Household Electric Appliance Industry In China

After more than 20 years of development, household electric appliance industry has become the matures and cruest industry in China. Products'homogenization, promotion and advertising practices'largely identical, make the competition focus on two fields: product development and marketing channel. Therefore, business-to-grasp of marketing channels has become a key factor in market competition, and having a good relationship between marketing channels become a winning point. Competition among enterprises in the 21st century is no longer a competition between enterprises monomer, but rather the enterprise in which competition between the supply chain. In fact, in a supply chain with manufacturers and merchants is not just a simple buyer-seller relationship, but a strategic and cooperative relation. So the relationship between the marketing channels with new changes compared to the previous: Its research focus gradually shift from transaction marketing paradigm to relationship marketing paradigm; Channel members concern about the economic benefits from the co-operative relationship toward a focus on the interests of relational benefits; From a focus on short-term benefits of cooperation toward a focus on long-term benefits of cooperation.In this context, we explore the impact of relationship learning on channel performance and identify the relationship between them. So as to obtain some constructive conclusions of improving channel relationships and increasing channel performance.Firstly, in reviewing the research papers on the basis of domestic and foreign scholars, we systematically summarized and organized the literatures of relationship learning, relationship trust, relationship commitment, relationship satisfaction and channel performance. The paper focus on relationship learning's content and research points of view which have not achieved common understandings; the main dimensions-relationship trust, relationship commitment and relationship satisfaction's contents and points of view of relationship quality; and value-based view of the channel performance. Not only clear the results of existing studies, but also point out the lack of research currently exists which is to structure the theoretical models and research hypotheses.Secondly, after a review of the literatures, this paper constructed an empirical model between relationship learning and channel performance. We researched relationship trust, relationship satisfaction and relationship commitment in the relationship between relationship learning and channel performance that the relationship between the path of relationship learning affecting channel performance mainly lie in the following five: relationship learning has an impact on channel performance through relationship satisfaction; relationship learning has an impact on channel performance through firstly relationship satisfaction and then relationship commitment; relationship learning has an impact on channel performance through relationship trust; relationship learning has an impact on channel performance through firstly relationship trust and then relationship commitment; relationship learning has an impact on channel performance through firstly relationship satisfaction, and secondly relationship trust and then relationship commitment. This part make clear that the overall theoretical model and research assumptions, and design the entire research process on the basis of it.Again, after the model construction, we collected the relevant information in the channel for corporate marketing activities through the questionnaire survey, for making the research more pointedly. The paper investigated 398 appliance distributors across the country and carried out the recovery of the data analysis on valid to complete the basic data collection. In the process of the research, we use SPSS and AMOS to inducted and sorted the data. What's more, we test the data reliability and validity, also validated the proposed assumptions on relationship learning, relationship satisfaction, relationship trust, relationship commitment and channel performance through factor analysis, variance analysis, interaction analysis and other methods. In this paper, the analysis of structural equation model reached the following conclusions: relationship learning has positive effect on relationship trust and relationship commitment; relationship satisfaction has positive effect on relationship trust, relationship commitment and channel performance; relationship trust has positive effect on relationship commitment; relationship commitment has positive effect on channel performance. However, relationship trust having positive effect on channel performance is not supported, which is contrary to expectations.Finally, according to the results of data analysis, the paper raised some important research findings, in order to provide references for domestic channel management practices. We also hope to further enrich the channel relationship management research of domestic appliance industry.