An Empirical Study On The Effect Of Developing Private Brand On Retailer-Supplier Relationship Quality

The contradictions between retailers and suppliers come up one after another in recent years, sometimes escalating into conflict, resulting in the retailer-supplier relationship increasing tensions and even to deteriorate. The mainly reason is that retailers increasingly develop, vertical restraints ability and market forces to continuously strengthen. And the retailers take advantages of the terminal edge to squeeze the profits of the supplier, and thus bring more challenges and threats to the supplier. Especially the development of its own retail brand (PB), a certain extent, exacerbates the relationship. Of the PB, not only crowding the shelves, enhancing the bargaining power of retailers, also can become a strategic tool for retailers against suppliers.Obviously, the PB advanced the development of the retailer-supplier relationship. But, what is the effect of the retailer’s PB for the retailer-supplier relationship? Whether its growth and maturity would impact the quality of the relationship? Now, these issues must be clarified accompanied the increasingly tense relationship. On the basis of theoretical studies, attempt to use empirical research methods to answer the above question.Now the Chinese retail market is a vast and low concentration, retail large business entities, and the PB has been nearly20years history. These provide the possibility of the sample selection and empirical research carried out. Referring to a lot of literature, this paper determines the measure of the degree of PB development and relationship quality, moreover, builds a research model that PB as the independent variable, relationship quality as the dependent variable. The whole research bases on the domestic retail market, and uses questionnaire for retailer unilateral measurement. Later research utilizes T-test, correlation analysis, regression analysis and other statistical methods for data processing, the conclusion as follows:1. There are significant differences of the relationship quality level between the retailers which have private brand or not. The level of the relationship quality perception between the retailers which has PB and their suppliers is better than the level between the retailers which has not PB and their suppliers.2. There are negative effects on relationship quality caused by the scale of private brand development. And the scale of the PB development brings a significant negative impact on the commitment, a significant positive effect on communication.3. There are significant positive effects on relationship quality caused by the access independence of private brand. And the access independence of PB brings a significant positive impact on trust and commitment. Particularly, the independence of PB logistics distribution way causes the greatest impact on the retailer-supplier relationship quality, and the way of PB development and production causes significant positive impact on commitment.