Research On Relationship Between Channel Relationship Quality, Channel Relationship Behavior And Dealer Performance

In drastic marketing competition, channels have direct and important influence on other management decision-making of an enterprise. As the economy system changes, the relationships between business corporations have been translated step by step from administrative subjection relationship into market exchange relationship, the channels have more prominent effect. Especially in recent years, marketing environment have been progressed in economy, social culture, technical environment and other aspect, which makes the channel management of manufacturers face new challenges. Based on above changes and challenges, it becomes the core strategy in channel practice of business corporations under current circumstance that building customer loyalty, promoting customer satisfaction and winning competition advantages through the relationships between channel partners. And the research on channel has been transferred from trade marketing into relationship marketing correspondingly.In recent years, relationship quality and relationship behavior have become the core field of channel relationship marketing researches. More and more relevant researches have been making in these days. But these researches have not been linked to the channel performance sufficiently, which is the core of traditional marketing researches. Moreover, these researches lack organic relations between themselves.We consider that some conformity researches on relations between fields and issues mentioned above need to be made, which conclusions will be used for reference for business corporations in China. Accordingly, researches on relationships between relationship quality, relationship behavior and channel performance have important meaning in both theory and practice. This thesis makes a primary research on these issues form supplier's perspective under relationship marketing paradigm.The thesis reviewed the literatures about relationship quality, relationship behavior and channel performance, puts forward a comprehensive framework for research on relationship quality - relationship behavior - channel performance under B2B context. Based on early researches, a major hypothesis is presented that relationship quality has direct impact on channel members' performance, as well as indirect influence throughchannel behavior between both sides, and these relationships will make marked variety during the different stages of relationships evolution or two sides of the relationship are in different scale. Moreover, we proposed 11 sub-hypothesis based on the major one.This thesis made an experiential demonstration to the hypotheses by a questionnaire research and data collection on numerous key informants of suppliers. The result shows that the relationships between relationship quality and relationship behavior, between relationship quality and dealer perfonnance, between relationship behavior and dealer performance don't make marked variety in different comparison to firm size .and do make marked variety during the different stages of relationships evolution, and during the different stages of relationships evolution channel relationship quality has notable impact on channel relationship behavior, channel relationship behavior has notable impact on dealer performance only at the maturity stage of relationships evolution and relationship quality has not indirect influence on dealer performance through channel behavior between both sides.As a conclusion, we consider that the theories on relationship quality and relationship behavior in Occident can not be applied exactly under specifically B2B market circumstance in China, although these theories could be valuable references to channel relationships practice of Chinese corporations. We analyzed and illuminated relevant results, and what future work should be done are discussed at last.Three innovations are involved in this thesis. One, relationship quality, relationship behavior and channel performance researches are integrated into one research framework for the first time. Two, corporation's self factors and interactive factors during relationship evolution are introduced into demonstration researches on relationships between relationship quality, relationship behavior and member performance for the first time. Three, the theories on relationship quality and relationship behavior in Occident are validated under specifically B2B market circumstance in China for the first time.