On The Behavioral Factors In The Incentive Of Channel Members

The relationship management of distribution channel members is probably a central issue of the marketing theoretical discussion recently, in which the incentive of channel members is an important subject. The suppliers and distributors won't collaborate positively because of their different transaction purposes. Thus, channel management is necessary. Incentive is one of the importance parts of channel management, so that whether the incentive is effective is directly related to realizing the channel management target. Organization control research reveals that behavioral factors can be regarded as the basis of control. On the basis of it, the organization makes sure that its goal can be realized. The behavioral factors of channel member transaction include commitment, trust, satisfaction, communication and etc. We suppose that these determinants may have an incentive impact on channel members, which may reduce the negative behaviors of channel members such as opportunistic behavior, propensity to leave, channel conflict and decision-making uncertainty. In addition, market competition and the distributor capacities influence the incentive effect. Based on the hypothesis and the review of the literature, we advance a model of distributor incentive, with the help of a survey of the channel distributors of digital product in Wuhan. We found that the positive behaviors of the supplier may enhance the distributor incentive and this incentive may reduce some negative behaviors of the distributor. Additionally, the incentive impact on distribution negative behaviors is seldom interrupted by the market competition but it is negative correlative with the distributor capacities.