Richard G. McFarland, James M. Bloodgood, & Janice M. Payan
Executive Summary
Drawing on research from the marketing, supply chain management, and operations management literature and on the basis of qualitative in-depth interviews, the authors identify a new phenomenon they term “supply chain contagion.” Supply chain contagion is the spreading or imitation of behaviors from one interfirm relationship to other interfirm relationships. Or, more simply, it is when firms treat other firms in their supply chain as they have been treated themselves. Wholesalers and retailers may be particularly likely to imitate the behaviors used by their suppliers with their own customers. Contagion can occur inadvertently and can occur with or without the knowledge of the affected parties. The authors develop a model that predicts the conditions under which contagion is likely to occur. Although contagion may take the form of any number of interfirm behaviors, operationally the authors focus on whether the downstream influence strategies used by manufacturers with their dealers are imitated by these same dealers with end customers. The authors conducted a study using a sample of 151 vertically linked manufacturer–dealer–customer supply chain triads from the agricultural farm equipment industry. The dealers in the study were resellers of agricultural equipment for a Fortune 500 company. A large variance (R2 = .30) in the use of downstream influence strategies is explained as supply chain contagion. Thus, the explanatory power of supply chain contagion is impressive and suggests that how intermediaries treat end customers is explained to an important extent as the intermediaries simply imitating how they were treated by their suppliers. Managers and boundary spanners need to be aware that their actions may have a ripple effect throughout the supply chain. Higher levels of contagion occur under conditions of high environmental uncertainty and with higher frequency of contact and greater perceived similarity between boundary personnel; dependence asymmetry has a negative effect on manifest contagion. Managers and boundary-spanning personnel who are aware of supply chain contagion effects should be better able to influence the behavior of channel partners strategically and may be better inoculated against their own unintended imitation of other organizations within their supply chain.
Biography
Richard G. McFarland is Associate Professor of Marketing in the College of Business Administration at Kansas State University. His research interests focus broadly on interpersonal influence and persuasion in personal selling; marketing channels; and buyer contexts; and, more specifically, on developing and extending theory regarding rational and emotional influence processes. Recently, he has begun to examine the role of emotional intelligence in personal selling and buyer decision making. He received his PhD from Georgia Institute of Technology, his MBA from the University of Arizona, and his BA from the University of California, Irvine. In addition to Journal of Marketing, his research has appeared in Marketing Letters and Journal of Personal Selling & Sales Management, among other journals. He has consulted for several firms in the areas of strategy formation, marketing research, and personal selling. He is a recipient of the Ralph Reitz Outstanding Teaching Award.
James M. Bloodgood is Associate Professor of Management in the Department of Management at Kansas State University. He holds a PhD in Management from the University of South Carolina. He has held various accounting and financial positions at General Motors. His work has been published in Academy of Management Review, Decision Support Systems, Journal of Management, Journal of Management Studies, and Journal of Organizational Behavior. His primary research interests include business strategy, institutional theory, and ethics.
Janice M. Payan is the Wells Fargo Assistant Professor of Marketing in the Kenneth W. Monfort College of Business at the University of Northern Colorado, Greeley, Colorado. Her research interests include influence, cooperation, and coordination in marketing channels, business-to-business markets, and supply chains. She is the recipient of the John A. Howard/American Marketing Association Doctoral Dissertation Award (2000), the Monfort College of Business Marketing Professor of the Year Award (2004–2005), and the Monfort College of Business Scholar of the Year Award (for 2004 performance and again for 2006 performance). In addition to top journals in marketing—Journal of Marketing, Journal of Business Research, Journal of Marketing Channels, Journal of Marketing Management, and Marketing Management Journal—she has published several other articles in leading academic publications. She received her Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin–Madison in 2000. In addition to her PhD, she holds three degrees from the University of Colorado (BS, MPA, and MBA). Before beginning her career in academia, she was a marketing executive with a large communications company. She has also acted as a consultant to companies in a variety of industries.
Journal of Marketing, Vol. 72, No. 2, March 2008
View Table of Contents