Eric (Er) Fang, Robert W. Palmatier, Lisa K. Scheer, & Ning Li
Executive Summary
Trust functions at three distinct organizational levels in a marketing collaboration: interorganizational trust between collaborating firms, each firm’s agency trust in its own representatives assigned to a collaborative entity (coentity), and intraentity trust among the representatives assigned to the co-entity. Dyadic survey and longitudinal objective performance data from 114 international joint ventures indicate that trust at each level has unique effects but similarly influences the collaborating firms’ resource investments or the coentity’s use of those resources. Interorganizational and agency trust motivate resource investments in the coentity, particularly in the context of a differentiation strategy, whereas intraentity trust promotes coordination within the coentity, and interorganizational trust and a differentiation strategy magnify that effect. Intraentity trust also can undermine coentity responsiveness to environmental change, especially when joined by interorganizational trust between collaborating firms and formalized decision making within the coentity. These findings demonstrate that managing and building trust at multiple levels is critical to the success of interorganizational marketing collaborations.
Biography
Eric (Er) Fang is Assistant Professor of Marketing at University of Delaware. He holds a PhD in Marketing from University of Missouri–Columbia. His research has appeared in Academy of Management Journal, Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, and Journal of Business Research. He research program focuses on the intersections of two areas (i.e., business-to-business relationship and innovation).
Robert W. Palmatier is Evert McCabe Faculty Fellow and Assistant Professor of Marketing at the University of Washington. He recently spent a year as a visiting professor at Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Management. He holds a bachelor’s and master’s degree in Electrical Engineering from Georgia Institute of Technology, an MBA from Georgia State University, and a PhD from the University of Missouri. His research interest is focused on relationship marketing theory and strategy with an emphasis on multilevel and multichannel customer relationships in the business-to-business and retail markets. His research has appeared in Journal of Marketing, Journal of Marketing Research, Marketing Science, Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, and International Journal of Research in Marketing. Before academia, he held numerous positions in industry, including president and chief operating officer of C&K Components and European general manager, director of worldwide marketing, director of worldwide strategic planning, and North American sales and marketing manager at multiple divisions of Tyco-Raychem Corporation. He has also served as a lieutenant onboard nuclear submarines in the United States Navy. He teaches PhD and executive MBA classes on marketing strategy, sales management, and relationship marketing.
Lisa K. Scheer isEmma S. Hibbs Distinguished Professor and Associate Professor of Marketing at the University of Missouri. She holds a BSBA and MBA from the University of Missouri, as well as a PhD from Northwestern University. Her research interests focus on interfirm relationships at both the interorganizational and interpersonal levels. Her research has appeared in Journal of Marketing, Journal of Marketing Research, Academy of Management Journal, Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, and International Journal of Research in Marketing.
Ning Li is Assistant Professor of Marketing in the School of Management at George Mason University. She holds an MS in Statistics and a PhD in Business Administration (concentration in Marketing) from Duke University. Her research program focuses on the intersections of two areas: business-to-business strategic alliances and marketing strategy of firms in the global market. She also studies culture’s impact on global sales management decisions. She teaches MBA and undergraduate classes on marketing strategy.
Journal of Marketing, Vol. 72, No. 2, March 2008
View Table of Contents