On Distributor Commitment in Marketing Channels for Industrial Products: Contrast between the United States and Japan

Previous studies have highlighted task environmental factors as the sole drivers of a distributor's commitment to its supplier and have found positive consequences of distributor commitment. The authors propose institutional factors as another motive for distributor commitment in channel relati...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of international marketing (East Lansing, Mich.) Mich.), 2002-03, Vol.10 (1), p.72-97
Main Authors: Kim, Keysuk, Oh, Changho
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Business structures
Consumer goods
Consumer research
Correlations
Data analysis
Distribution channels
Distributors
Economic resources
Goal setting
Hypotheses
Industrial products
Institutionalization
Marketing
Pliers
Retailing industry
Social power
Statistical analysis
Studies
Suppliers
Vendor supplier relations
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Summary:Previous studies have highlighted task environmental factors as the sole drivers of a distributor's commitment to its supplier and have found positive consequences of distributor commitment. The authors propose institutional factors as another motive for distributor commitment in channel relationships. Specifically, the authors suggest that long-term orientation is an essential institutional environment to consider for a comparative study of distributor commitment. The authors hypothesize that distributor commitment is driven by both task environmental factors and institutional factors. The authors conduct national surveys of industrial distributors in the United States and Japan to test the hypotheses. The hypothesis test results indicate that task environmental factors are related significantly to distributor commitment regardless of the channel contexts and that the effect of an institutional factor varies across the channel contexts.
ISSN:1069-031X
1547-7215
DOI:10.1509/jimk.10.1.72.19530