Potential--Perception--Performance

With the development of marketing environment and complication of channel practice, academic researches on channel theory have experienced two different stages.Before 1970s, the economic-orientated channel structural theory was the mainstream of channel research, while relationship paradigm of channel study which based on behavioral researches has become the new hot topic since then.However,both structural and relationship theory conducts dyadic-relationship research only according to the different position in channel system.Meanwhile,the present researches on channel only focus on the improvement of existing channel relationship so far.Moreover,there is no such study that investigates the channel relationship from a new creative perspective,even rarely has the research consider how enterprises should choose the appropriate channel partner from the very beginning of relationship,not only just pay attention to raise the efficiency and quality of the existing channel.This study tries to testify the following two questions through empirical study:is there any significant perception difference of the relationship quality between two parties if we classify the dyadic relationship by their strong or weak potential? Could the weak party achieve its goal to get a better performance if it chooses to cooperate with a strong enterprise? Based on the brief literature review on evolution process of channel theory,this study combines the power paradigm and the relationship paradigm to build a new theory framework.Using 212 samples,we have compared the weak and strong parties' perception in asymmetric channel relationship by Independent-Samples T-Test and tested the impacts of their perceptions towards channel relationship on LISREL software.The research findings indicated that there exists significant difference between two parties' perception towards dependence,trust and satisfactory in asymmetric channel relationship.The dependence of the weak party is higher than that of the strong party,while higher trust and satisfactory in the strong party.But no significant difference exists between the two parties' influence of perceived conflict and perceived dependence on trust and satisfactory. Furthermore,the strong party's performance will be improved because of the improvement of its satisfactory while the week party's performance will not be influence by satisfactory.Thus, in asymmetric channel relationship the week party's benefits cannot be effectively guaranteed because its performance could not be improved through the enhancement of satisfactory. Finally,this study tries to give instruction on the current development strategy of Chinese small and medium-sized enterprises and help them to find more appropriate channel partners, and to propose future research.