An Empirical Investigation of Relationship Between Interdependence and Conflict in Co-marketing Alliance

공동마케팅제휴에 있어 상호의존성과 갈등의 관계에 대한 연구

Researchers in channel dyads have devoted much attention to relationship between interdependence (i.e. interdependence enymmetry and total interdependence) and conflict that promote channel performance. In social science, in spite of the inconsistent results in marketing practice, there are two contradictory theories explain the relationship between interdependence and conflict - bilateral deterrence theory and conflict spiral theory. The authors apply these theories to co-marketing alliance situation in terms that this relationship is also incorporated both company's dependence, either from one company's perspective or each partner about its respective dependence. Using survey data and archival data from 181 companies enlisted in a telecommunication membership program, the authors find out the relationship between interdependence and conflict as well as investigate the antecedents of interdependence - transaction age, transaction frequency, the numbers of alliance partner, and co-marketing alliance specific assets according to previous researches. Using PLS analysis, the authors demonstrate that, with increasing total interdependence in a telecommunication membership program, two co-marketing partners' conflict level is increased in accord with the author's conflict spiral theory predictions. As expected, higher interdependence asymmetry has negative value to level of conflict even though this result is not statistically significant. Other findings can be summarized as follows. In the perspective of telecommunication company, transaction age, transaction frequency, and co-marketing alliance specific assets have influence on its dependence on a partner as independent variables. To the contrary, in a partner's perspective, transaction frequency, co-marketing alliance specific assets and the numbers of alliance partner have significantly impact on its dependence on a telecommunication company. In direct effect analysis, it is shown that transaction age, frequency and co-marketing alliance specific assets have direct influence on conflict. This results suggest that it is more useful for a telecommunication company to select a co-marketing partner which is frequently used by customers and earned high rates of mileage. In addition, the results show that dependence of a telecommunication company on a co-marketing partner is more significantly effected to co-marketing alliance conflict than partner's one. It provide an effective conflict management strategy to a telecommunication company for controling customer's usage rate or having the co-marketing partner deposit high level of alliance specific investment (i.e. mileage). To a co-marketing partner of telecommunication company, it is required control the percentage of co-marketing sales in total sales revenue or seek various co-marketing partners in order for co-marketing conflict management. The research implications, limitation and future research of these results are discussed.

본 연구는 지금까지 유통분야에서 제조업자와 판매업자간에 관계를 연구해오던 상호의존성의 개념을 판매업자간의 공동마케팅 제휴관계에 적용하였다. 제휴관계에 있는 양자 간의 의존성과 상호의존성이 갈등에 미치는 영향을 사회학 분야에서 상호의존성과 갈등 간의 관계에 대해 상반된 견해를 제시하는 이론인 갈등 나선형 이론과 쌍무적 억제이론으로 설명해보고자 하였다. 기존의 연구들이 설문을 통해 변수간의 관계를 파악하였다면, 본 연구에서는 이동통신사와 공동마케팅 제휴관계에 있는 181개 기업의 거래데이터 및 설문을 동시에 이용하였으며 상호의존성의 선행요인으로 거래기간, 거래빈도, 거래선의 수, 거래특유자산 등의 변수를 도출하여 상호의존성과의 관계를 파악하였다. 실증분석결과, 이통통신사의 제휴서비스 환경에서는 상호의존성의 총합이 증가할수록 갈등수준 역시 증가함을 알 수 있었으며 따라서, 상호의존성과 갈등간의 관계를 설명하기 위해서는 쌍무적 억제 이론 보다는 갈등 나선형 이론이 더 적합함을 알 수 있었다. 아울러, 이동통신사의 관점에서는 거래기간, 거래빈도, 거래특유자산이, 제휴파트너 관점에서는 거래빈도, 거래특유자산, 거래선의 수가 각각 상대방에 대한 의존성에 영향을 미치는 요소로 도출되었다. 이를 통해 이통통신사 및 제휴파트너 관점에서 효율적인 갈등관리 전략을 제시하였으며 학문적 시사점들과 연구의 한계점에 대해 제시하였다.