Curbing opportunism in marketing channels : The roles of influence strategy and perceived fairness

Opportunism is vital in marketing channel relationships and existing research has identified several influential factors as antecedents of opportunism. Nonetheless, we have little specific knowledge of how manufacturer's influence strategies or how reseller's fairness perception affects reseller's opportunistic behavior. This study examines the independent and interactive effects of influence strategies and fairness perception on the resellers’ opportunism tendency. Empirical evidence shows that the manufacturer's use of coercive influence strategy increases the resellers’ opportunism tendency whereas manufacturer's use of noncoercive influence strategy reduces it. The results also suggest that distributive and procedural fairness perceptions moderate the relationship between influence strategies and opportunism tendency. In particular, procedural fairness perception strengthens the effect of noncoercive influence on opportunism tendency. Contrary to our hypothesis, distributive fairness worsens the harmful effect of coercive influence on the reseller's opportunism tendency. The latter counterintuitive finding provides directions for future research along with insights for channel management.