The Influence of Psychological Distance and Personal Relationship of Channel Members on Conflict, Satisfaction and Performance

Abstract

This study aims to find out the influence of psychological distance and personal relationship of channel members on conflict, satisfaction and performance. And we also study the connection between psychological distance and personal relationship and the influence of personal relationship on organizational trust. Besides, we discuss the substitution effect of personal relationship to organizational relationship, in the specific business environment of China, especially in the cooperation between small distributors and large suppliers. The trust on the salesmen of suppliers from the dealers may have more influence on their decision and behaviors than the trust on the supply organization. So the influence of organizational trust may not be very significant in our study. Our data are from 200 gas stations of Sinopec. And we design panel data regressions of several dimensions for every research variable, to study it objectively and comprehensively. Based on the results of regressions, this study try to explain the effect of psychological distance and personal relationship on the factors of channel, and put forward some advice to company operation. The conclusion of our study may be different from many traditional theories, because we find that the organizational trust doesn’t affect conflict, satisfaction and performance significantly.