اثرات بازارگرایی در یادگیری ارتباطی و عملکرد ارتباطی در بازاریابی صنعتی: دیدگاه های زوجی

From dyadic perspectives, this study explores the effect of market orientation on relationship learning and relationship performance and the moderating effect of relationship quality in Taiwan manufacturing industry. The results reveal that: (1) both customer market orientation and supplier market orientation are positively related to relationship learning; (2) relationship learning is positively related to relationship performance; (3) both customer and supplier market orientation has positively interaction effect on shared information and negatively interaction effect on sense-making activities; and (4) trust of relationship quality has moderating effect on the relationship between customer market orientation and relationship learning.

Since Dwyer, Schurr, and Oh (1987) emphasized the importance of relationship in marketing; many researches have studied this topic from different approaches. Selnes and Sallis (2003) suggested that most successful collaborative relationship is developed when both parties are market orientated. This statement highlights the idea that both upper and lower stream firms in the supply chain need market orientation culture to create the best collaborative relationship with their partners. Because firms want a steady long-term partnership to maintain sustainable competitive advantage, they will think carefully about how to foster co-learning with their partners. However, in the supply chain system the question arises whether competitive advantages can be created if only unilateral company pursues the market orientation or if only one of the partners has learning culture. The research of dyads in market orientation has been lacking. This study tries to fill this gap by using dyadic perspectives to discuss market orientation and relationship learning. When discussing about the co-ordinational relationship between partners, Håkansson and Snehota (1995) considered only trust and commitment as important attributes at inter-firm coordination level. However, Medlin, Aurifeille, and Quester (2005) suggest that future dyadic relationship studies should concentrate on trust, commitment and relationship performance. Selnes and Sallis (2003) proposed that the moderating effect of trust on relationship performance should be considered along with learning. Leong, Furnham, and Cooper (1996) examined the effect of commitment as a moderator between the outcome relationship and organization. In accordance with these studies, this study explores the moderating effect of trust and commitment on the relationship between market orientation and relationship learning. This paper adopts the dyadic perspectives from both supplier and customer viewpoints and tries to explore: (1) the relationship among market orientation, relationship learning, and relationship performance; (2) the interaction effect of supplier market orientation and customer market orientation on relationship learning; (3) the moderating effects of trust and commitment on the relationship between market orientation and relationship learning. The rest of this paper is organized as follows. Section 2 introduces the research framework and proposes hypotheses concerning the relationship among market orientation, relationship learning, and relationship performance. Section 3 then presents the research methodology. The findings with respect to the hypotheses are presented in Section 4. Finally, Section 5 summarizes the results, the implications of the study, and suggestions for future research.

One important contribution of this research is to highlight the dyadic learing perspectives from both customers and suppliers. Slater and Narver (1995) argued that a firm's market orientation provides strong norms for learning from customers and competitors. In the following section the impact of the main effect of market orientation on relationship learning as well as the interactive link between market orientation and relationship learning is discussed in depth.As can be expected, customers and suppliers imply that market orientation indeed has a direct effect on relationship learning. So when both manufacturers and their suppliers are thinking about ways to respond to the market, they are likely to plan a strategy together and develop a long-term relationship. In the process they have to understand many things about their partners, and then they can communicate better with their partners while doing business with each other through the organizational process that can take full advantage of market-orientation culture (Slater & Narver, 2000). When firms succeed in the interactive learning process they can develop a superior relationship with their partners. Therefore relationship learning has a specific impact on the interactive processes with a partner. It facilitates better and more effective co-working activities in customer-supplier relationships. The organization culture has a discernible impact on buyers' and sellers' interactive behaviors (Deshpande & Webster, 1989). Therefore, the key point is whether both customers and suppliers have a market orientation culture. However, supplier market orientation and customer market orientation do not have an interactive effect on relationship learning. After further analysis, the results reveal that when both sides have a higher market orientation, the relationship could facilitate the information sharing activities. It is commonly known when customers and suppliers have the same organizational culture it facilitates the communication ability and ease in reaching a common decision. However, the interaction effect on the sense-making is negative. That means when the supplier market orientation is high, the more customer market orientation, the lower joint sense-making is. We further use one-way ANOVA with fixed-effect to test the relationship between supplier market orientation and annual average sales volume. The result shows the annual average sales volumes and supplier market orientation have a positive relationship (p = 0.02). That means the higher supplier's market orientation the greater annual average sales volumes. Joint sense-making means to establish coordinated work teams to solve problems and learn from each other. When customers consider sense-making activities with a higher sales volume firm (higher market orientation level), they may be afraid the supplier will disclose their business secrets to their competitors. If a supplier market orientation is high, he will try their best to satisfy customers' needs. Consequently it is easy for the supplier to disclose the information to another customer to create a competitive advantage. Especially in sense-making activities it is possible to disclose too much information to others in the coordinated work team. Therefore customer responses show a negative moderating effect. A firm with lower market orientation levels wouldn't exchange too much information with another firm in the market. As a result customers feel no danger in pursuing sense-making learning behavior with the lower market-orientation supplier. Relationship-specific memories involve all kinds of actions between the two organizations. In this way the two partners can share and integrate the memories, such as contracts, computer data and document classification and so on. The results reveal that both customer and supplier market orientation have no interaction effect on the relationship-specific memories. The result needs further research. The results reveal that commitment does not have moderating effect. The percentage of less than six cooperation years is almost 50% in customer and supplier samples, the cooperation time is too short to develop real commitment for each other. That may be the reason why the moderating effect does not exist. Nevertheless, it is still evident that trust has a moderating effect on the relationship between customer market orientation and relationship learning. Therefore, buyers consider trust as an important element when they do relationship learning activities with their suppliers. However, trust has no moderating effect on the relationship between supplier market orientation and relationship learning. The reason may be the size of firms. The data shows suppliers are usually smaller than customers. When customers deal with the smaller supplier in a business transaction, they must consider to what extent they can trust their partner. In contrast, there is lower risk when a seller sells the product to a bigger buyer. As a result, a supplier wouldn't be afraid to deal with bigger firms and trust has no moderating effect.Relationship learning would promote the effectiveness and the efficiency of the relationship, and also ensure steps to enhance the relationship performance. This study also confirms that relationship learning could help manufacturing companies get better relationship performance with their partners. Therefore, firms could establish the relationship learning activities with their partners, which would ideally provide them with superior relationship performance.