Channel Member’s Voice Behavior And Channel Silence Behavior:A Conceptual Model And Research Propositions

In the relationship of marketing paradigm,the enterprise focus more on establishing a long-term and stable channel relationship with their partners.This requires channel members have a strong and initiative cooperation attitude.In order to promote the establishment and maintenance of the close channel relationship,the spontaneous and promotion Extra-Role Behavior(ERB)has been concerned by the academic circles.In view of the importance ERB to the marketing channel theory and the neglect of voice and silence behavior in marketing channel,this study combines organizational behavior and channel behavior theory,extending voice and silence to inter-organization context.When one part in channel exchange activities discovers some problem or gets important information,he has the right to choose to tell his partner or not.We define the channel member initiative gives useful information to channel partner for the purpose to improve the status quo as Marketing Channel Voice Behavior(MCV),and making no feedback as Marketing Channel Silence Behavior(MCS).Under channel behavior,social exchange and resource dependence theory,this study constructs a conceptual model of a channel voice and silence behavior,and makes a discussion about the driving factor of channel voice and silence behavior,and its influence on the channel performance.When considerd about the antecedent variables of distributors’ marketing channel voice and marketing channel silence behavior,this paper mainly discussed from three dimensions.For the Individual level,we mainly pay attention on the characteristics of the distributor enterprise.For the relational level,relationship between distributors and suppliers has been taken into consideration.For the environmental level,we see the competitive environment of distributors.Through the analysis,we pointed out that relationship marketing oriented distributors,or distributors with strong sense of responsibility and proactive to their partner,tend to adopt channel voice behavior when partner in trouble or having something useful.However,when distributors are transaction oriented,with low conscientiousness and not proactive one,prone to behave channel silence behavior.And when the distributors and suppliers have good relationship(performed with higher trust and commitment),the magnitude of interdependence between distributors and suppliers is high,and suppliers are more reliant on to distributors,distributors tend to channel voice when suppliers are in trouble or having something useful for it.On the contrary,when the quality of the relationship between suppliers and distributors is low(performed with lower trust and commitment low trust and commitment),the magnitude of interdependence between distributors and suppliers is low,distributors rely more on suppliers,these will promote distributors chose to channel silence.For the third level,it can be seen that when the competition degree of distributors industry is high,the distributors will behave channel voice,and if distributors are in a low degree of industry competition environment they tend to behave channel silence behavior.For results about channel voice and channel silence behavior,this paper focuses on the impact of these two kinds of behavior on channel economic performance and relationship performance.The distributor channel voice behavior can effectively improve the channel overall economic performance and relationship performance;channel silence will reduce the economic performance of the channel,while the effect on channel relationship performance is not obvious.The potential theoretical contributions of this study are mainly embodied in three aspects.First,this paper takes the organizational behavior science organization in voice and silence behavior research of literature as the basis,combines with the channel behavior theory,makes voice and silent concept to expand to long-term interactive activities,and defines the concept of channel voice and channel silence behavior.This deepens and expands the study of the external behavior of the channel role,and further enriches and expandes the research of the channel behavior theory.Secondly,this study combines with channel behavior,social exchange theory,constructs the conceptual model of a channel voice and silence behavior.And it discusses the driving factor of channel voice and silence behavior and effect on channel performance theoretically,which provides the basis for future empirical research.The last one is that this study makes research on the organizational level,that enriches and expands the suggestions and silence theory research.