Conflict and performance in channels: a meta-analysis
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ORIGINAL EMPIRICAL RESEARCH
Conflict and performance in channels: a meta-analysis Kamran Eshghi 1 & Sourav Ray 2 Received: 16 January 2019 / Accepted: 1 October 2020 # Academy of Marketing Science 2020
Abstract Conflict between channel members is of great interest to marketers given its presumed negative impact on the channel’s business performance. In a comprehensive meta-analysis of the empirical literature spanning six decades between 1960 and 2020, we observe channel performance is indeed negatively linked to channel conflict. However, we find that this conflict–performance link has evolved significantly over time, roughly in keeping with the growth and maturing of e-commerce technologies. Further, the damage caused by conflict appears to be more pronounced for channels with international operations, and for channels with greater dependency between channel members. Additionally, businesses in North America seem to suffer the consequences of channel conflict more than others. Our results also show several study characteristics related to measurement and sampling significantly impact the empirical conflict–performance links reported in the literature. We base our conclusions on correlational analyses, two-stage meta-analytic structural equation modeling (TSSEM), and meta-analytic regression analyses (MARA). Keywords Distribution channels . Channel conflict . Channel performance . Meta-analysis
Introduction What is common between Apple, Cisco, Tesco, Kaufland and Unilever? While they operate in different product markets, have different business models, and serve different customer groups, they all suffer from channel conflict, which can be broadly defined as a consequential disagreement between members of the marketing channel. For instance, when Apple teamed up with Cisco for its enterprise sales, disagreements broke out with its channel partners with one pointing out that “its revenue from Apple products and services shrunk from 100 percent to less than 10 percent of its overall business Supplementary Information The online version of this article (https:// doi.org/10.1007/s11747-020-00751-1) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. Constantine S. Katsikeas served as Area Editor for this article. * Sourav Ray [email protected] Kamran Eshghi [email protected] 1
Assistant Professor, Faculty of Management, Laurentian University, 935 Ramsey Lake Rd., ON P3E 2C6 Sudbury, Canada
2
Michael Lee-Chin & Family Professor in Strategic Business Studies and Professor of Marketing, Degroote School of Business, McMaster University, 1280 Main Street W., ON L8S 4M4 Hamilton, Canada
over the past five years” (CRN 2015). Disputes over who should bear the cost of a weakening UK currency resulted in Tesco removing some Unilever products from its website and shelves, further aggravating the disputes between the two giant channel partners (Financial Times 2016). Differences over pricing prompted another retailer Kaufland, to remove more than 400 Unilever products from its portfolio, much to the
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