Study On The Impact Of Manufacturers' Use Of Channel Power On Resellers' Perceived Fairness

Studying the theory of channel behavioral is to establish sustainable, stable, efficiency and fast developed channel and then to let channel members can gain more benefits. Many scholars agree that channel satisfaction is an important factor to promote long-term and stable development of channel relationships (Zhang, Xu, Xia, 2010). Generally speaking, different channel members with different goals and status will use different levels of power to influence and control each other and to reach their goals. The motivation of the channel members are consistent, but as for conditions they possessed are different, it is easy to lead to the intense channel relationships. Under this kind of channel relationships, in order to protect their benefits and to avoid the unfair treatment, they will struggle to do business with enterprises which have the sense of equality, because this kind of business will sacrifice their own profits to safeguard the interests of the other side and to maintain long-term development relations (Kumar,1996; Scheer,2003). Heide, John(1992) and Kaufmann, Stern (1988) also argued that fairness plays an important role in the long relationship. Then, Yilmaz, Sezen and Kabaday (2004) found that the perception of distribution fairness and procedure fairness would both promote the improvement of satisfaction. However, there is less research to study the fairness perception. And the research of antecedents of fairness would provide good suggestions for channel members to make others fell fair. Hence, it is very important to define which factors may cause fairness perception? Will there be the influence between the use of the channel power and fairness perceptions? How to affect the influence and how to produce the effect of satisfaction?Based on the theoretical background and practical environment mentioned above, this paper selects the use of channel power, channel fairness and channel satisfied, to explore the relationship between the variables. First, the paper puts forward the related research hypothesis and the theoretical model through studying and sorting the past the literature concerned. Secondly,144 furniture dealers in the Dalian area would be selected as subjects to collect data, and SPSS18.0 would be the statistical analysis software. Finally, test the hypotheses according to the results of the processed data. Thus, this paper concludes that the following conclusions:Firstly, there are not significant influence on the manufacturers' use of coercive power and the dealer' fairness perception of distribution and procedure. However, there exist positively influence on the manufacturers' use of noncoercive power and the dealer' fairness perception of distribution and procedure.Secondly, the dealers' fairness perception of distribution improves their economy satisfaction and relationship satisfaction. The perception of procedure fairness promotes their economy satisfaction and relationship satisfaction.Thirdly, the influence perception of procedure fairness on economy satisfaction is more than the influence perception of distribution fairness on economy satisfaction. And the influence perception of procedure fairness on relationship satisfaction is more than the influence perception of distribution fairness on relationship satisfaction.According to the results of the study above, it is concluded that the most important contribution of this paper is to expand the study about the reason variable of the channel fairness perception and rich the channel behavioral theories. At the same time, this paper also provides some proposals about marketing practice. One of the most important proposals is that channel members should adopt the noncoercive power to improve the partners'perception of distribution fairness and procedure fairness as far as possible, because the perception of fairness would promote their economic satisfaction and relationship satisfaction. Finally, they will get a long and steady relationship.