Abstract
The importance of major dealers’ expertise in distribution channels and effects on exchange relations is widely acknowledged by many SMEs in Africa and yet there seem to be a paucity of research on this matter. To address this dearth, the current study attempts to examine the impact of major dealers’ expert power on SME manufacturers’ channel cooperation and the mediating influence of their trust, relationship commitment and satisfaction. The conceptualized model and five hypotheses are empirically validated using a sample of 452 manufacturing SMEs in Zimbabwe. The findings indicate that major dealers’ expert power may influence SME manufacturers’ trust, relationship commitment, relationship satisfaction and channel cooperation in a significant way. Managerial implications of the research findings are provided.
Highlights
Most small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in Southern Africa among others lack expertise to conduct their business successfully (Chinomona, Lin, Wang & Cheng, 2010; Pretorius, 2008)
Cooperative strategic alliances have been formed as a result and are on the increase according to the extant literatures (Ahuja, 2000; Dyer & Singh, 1998; Kale, Singh, & Perlmutter, 2000)
Students from the University of Zimbabwe were recruited to distribute and collect the questionnaires after appointments with target SME manufacturers were made by telephone
Summary
Most small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in Southern Africa among others lack expertise to conduct their business successfully (Chinomona, Lin, Wang & Cheng, 2010; Pretorius, 2008). Most SMEs in developing countries lack expert skills and resources to conduct market research (Carson & Gilmore, 2000), advertise or promote their products to a broad spectrum of people/ markets (Huang & Brown, 1999) and training their sales personnel to market their products with efficacy (Conant & White, 1999). And beyond, they lack experience and reputation to effectively distribute their products to the end users Understanding how the major dealers’ expert power are related to SMEs channel cooperation and relationship marketing is undoubtedly a matter of great significance (c.f. Sahadev, 2005)
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