The Effects Of Supplier’s Applications Of Channel Power On Dealer’s Responses And The Succeeding Result When Channel Relationship Encounters Difficulties

When we try to make a conclusion of the discipline embedded in enterprises’ development, we can find that every enterprise can not avoid going through difficulties. Relationships between marketing channel members, too, can not always be kept well. As a result, acting as marketing channel leaders, manufacturers ought to make good use of its channel power, and understand the responses made by its downstream distributors, what’s more, they should know the final outcome of their two different kinds of power applications. It is urgent and important for enterprises to protect themselves from opportunity behavior acted by their channel members.When we checked out recent researches on channel behavior theory, we found that most researchers had concentrated on the relationship development stage, few to consider when the relationship encountered troubles. What’s more, the variables which the researchers had used were almost included in the scale of the theory. For instance, the relationship between conflict、trust、satisfaction and different applications of channel power. That is why our study try to draw your attention to the period when the relationship problem shows. We aim to explore the effects of the two different ways of channel power applications on the lower distributors’ responses——voice and exit propensity, then we will check out their influences on channel opportunism.Based on our theory model, we proposed six assumptions. We had investigated numbers of local super household markets, and got 158 distributor samples. We used statistical analysis software SPSS 22.0 and Amos 22.0 to analyze the sample data aiming to support our hypotheses. According to our testing results, only one hypothesis failed to be true, the others were all supported. Depending on the supported hypotheses, we made an intensive discussion and reassured the theory contributions. In the end we stated the paper’s administration suggestions and pointed out our limits so that the following scholars can refer to it.At the beginning of the research, we chose sanitary appliance distributors as our respondents. The contents of the investigations are as follows:the manufacturers’ self-awareness of their different channel power applications, the distributors’ responses toward their suppliers’applications of the two kinds channel power when facing relationship problems, and how these behaviors effects distributors’ opportunism. The results reveal that compulsory power application will do a significant positive effect on exit propensity, and it will do a significant negative effect on voice; the non-compulsory power application will do a significant negative effect on exit propensity, and it will do a significant positive effect on voice; exit propensity will lead to opportunism, but voice won’t. What’s more, exit propensity acts as a bridge between two power applications and opportunism.According to the results, we can make a conclusion that the two different power applications of manufacturers’indeed have opposite impacts on distributors’exit propensity and voice. Compulsory power application always do harm to the marketing channel relationships, on the contrary, non-compulsory power application will benefit the marketing channel relationships. From the results of our study, we can see that voice can not restrain opportunism, which confuses us a lot. Maybe, it is reasonably to say that there exists no friendship between marketing channel members. What is enterprises’ top priority is just profit. As a result, when problems appear inside the marketing channel, manufacturers should not only take care of those who have negative attitude, but also warn out those positive ones. We are sure that this study not only has a significant theory influence, but also provide clear and operational suggestions to channel managers, so, it definitely has much more profound management meaning.