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Interpersonal influence as an alternative channel communication behavior in emerging markets: The case of China

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Abstract

Channel communications in emerging markets are embedded in the intricacy of economic and sociocultural environments. Managing channel relationships in emerging markets therefore requires more than formal interfirm communication to rely on interpersonal influence. Extending embeddedness theory, we offer a conceptualization incorporating three embedding elements – task environment, social relations, and institutional norms – into a preliminary model that specifies the antecedents, moderators, and contingent consequences of interpersonal influence strategies in marketing channels. Specifically, dependence, firm boundary spanners’ social capital, and their cultural values (e.g., guanxi orientation) may combine to shape firm boundary spanners’ use of interpersonal influence in channel communications, which in turn affects channel member satisfaction. In a Chinese marketing channel context, we test our research hypotheses with parallel analyses of 395 matched supplier–retailer dyads. The empirical results provide general support for the predictions, and reveal differences between suppliers and retailers in terms of the focal effects.

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Notes

  1. The guanxi orientation and interpersonal influence scales initially were developed in Chinese and then back-translated into English.

  2. The t-test indicates no significant difference between the supplier and the retailer in guanxi orientation. Thus, following Rokkan et al. (2003), we use pooled data in the confirmatory factor analysis.

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Acknowledgements

We thank Professor David Tse, the Departmental Editor, and three anonymous JIBS reviewers for their insightful comments and guidance. We also thank Professor Jan Heide, University of Wisconsin-Madison, and participants at a research seminar at Wuhan University for their helpful comments on previous versions of this article. Additionally, we appreciate the assistance of Professor Minxue Huang, Wuhan University, in data collection, and gratefully acknowledge research grants from the Research Grant Council of Hong Kong SAR (CERG 9041185,9041182), Natural Science Foundation of China and the Research Grant Council of Hong Kong SAR Joint Research Scheme (NSFC 70318001- HKRGC N_CityU127/03), and City University of Hong Kong (SRG 7001629) for financial support.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Marketing, City University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong

    Chenting Su, Zhilin Yang & Wenyu Dou

  2. Department of Marketing, Xi’an Jiao Tong University, China

    Guijun Zhuang

  3. Department of Marketing, City University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong

    Nan Zhou

  4. Wuhan University, China

    Nan Zhou

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  1. Chenting Su
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  2. Zhilin Yang
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Correspondence to Chenting Su.

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Accepted by David Tse, Departmental Editor, 2 January 2008. This paper has been with the authors for two revisions.

APPENDIX

APPENDIX

See Tables A1 and A2.

Table a1 Scale itemsa, means, standard deviations, and correlations
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Table a2 Correlation matrices and descriptive statistics
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Su, C., Yang, Z., Zhuang, G. et al. Interpersonal influence as an alternative channel communication behavior in emerging markets: The case of China. J Int Bus Stud 40, 668–689 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1057/jibs.2008.84

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