Influence Strategies in Marketing Channels: Measures and Use in Different Relationship Structures

Abstract

The authors develop new measures of influence strategies in marketing channels (i.e., the means by which a firm's personnel communicate with its partners to affect their behavior) in order to examine associations with the strength of buyer-seller relationships (relationalism) and alternative governance structures (market, administered, franchise, and corporate). Study 1 was a field test of the new multi-item measure of influence strategies in a contractual channel system. The results confirm the predicted negative association between relationalism and the following influence strategies: threats, legalistic pleas, and requests. Study 2 replicated tests of the psychometric quality of the scales in all four forms of governance. The results show that (1) the frequency of recommendations, promises, and information exchange is associated positively with a global measure of relationalism and (2) the frequency of almost all supplier communications differs across the four governance structures.