Impact Of Social Capital On Enterprise Channel Performance

Since ancient times,China is a social society and people pay much attention to establish and maintain “Guanxi”.People not only use “Guanxi” in personal activities,but also in the inter-firm relationships.Business ties and political ties form the enterprise social capital,which helps enterprises to obtain information and resources,and then help the enterprises achieve successes.Therefore,the study of the influences of social capital is of great significance.However,through literature review,we find there are inconsistencies about the influences of social capital in the existing studies.Besides,many existing studies focus on the impact of social capital on the enterprise itself.This paper selected the marketing channel as the specific research context,and discussed the impact of social capital(business ties and political ties)on enterprise channel performance.Based on which,we investigated the moderating effects of demand uncertainty and competitive intensityAfter reviewing the existing literature,we put forward the conceptual model and research hypothesis.In order to verify the proposed hypothesis,we adopted the questionnaire survey method.First of all,we selected the distributors from related industries as the main research object.We designed and distributed questionnaires,and finally get 392 valid questionnaires.And then,we analyzed and tested the data using AMOS20 and SPSS17 software.The empirical results show that: business ties have a significant positive effect on channel performance;political ties have a significant positive impact on the enterprise channel performance;demand uncertainty strengthens the relationship between business ties and channel performance,but its strengthening effect on the relationship between political ties and channel performance is not significant;the competition intensity weakened the relationship between political ties and channel performance,but its weakening effect on the relationship between business ties and channel performance is not significant.This study has some theoretical and managerial contribution.First of all,this study expands the scope of social capital and marketing channel study fields by introducing social capital theory into the marketing channel study.And then,the empirical results help to explain the inconsistency of the existing research;at the same time,we point out the dark side of the political ties.In practice,this paper confirms the positive effect of social capital on enterprise channel performance,and can guide enterprises to allocate resources on business ties and political ties in different industry environment,avoiding losses and maximizing the benefits.