عوامل مؤثر بر سه جنبه از اعتماد مشتری: یک مدل بازاریابی رابطه خریدار تامین کننده ژاپن

Interorganizational trust has attracted significant research attention as the determinant of the development of a cooperative long-term manufacturer–supplier relationship (CLMSR). It has been realized as a mechanism of organizational control in interfirm relationships. However, little is known about the critical business-marketing problem of how to build customer trust. This study proposes a CLMSR marketing model and tests it with data collected from 118 Japanese manufacturers from six manufacturing sectors. The model investigates roles of two CLMSR marketing variables (i.e., perceived supplier relationship-specific investments (RSIs) and perceived supplier relationship-specific interaction competence (RSIC)) in building three facets of customer trust (i.e., contractual, competence, and goodwill) via two mediating variables (i.e., customer relationship satisfaction and perceived supplier relationship commitment). While supporting distinctive psychological properties of the three trust components, our findings supported the critical role of the two CLMSR marketing variables and provided a new insight into supplier RSIs for the development of a CLMSR.

In the increasingly resource-demanding and competitive environment, many manufacturers have adopted a Japanese-style manufacturer–supplier relationship, or a cooperative long-term manufacturer–supplier relationship (CLMSR). It is characterized by joint management of value creation for superior productivity through cooperative, synergistic problem-solving activities between the exchange parties based on their mutual respect and long-term perspectives (Sako, 1992). Manufacturers in pursuit of a CLMSR place significant emphasis in supplier selection and appraisal, on the nonconventional supplier attribute, trustworthiness, to safeguard their increased dependence on a supplier (cf. Anderson and Weitz, 1992 and Morgan and Hunt, 1994). This new marketing environment urges business marketers to develop a new set of marketing competence and knowledge as to how to build customer trust. However, the existing marketing literature is not able to offer a prescriptive guideline on the critical marketing problem for the following two reasons. Firstly, it is scant as to a CLMSR marketing model due to the overemphasis of past studies on interaction outcomes and structure (cf. Sheth and Parvatiyar, 1995). Secondly, it is dominated by studies on CLMSRs pursued by non-Japanese manufacturers that are still in the process of internalizing the new exchange system (cf. Dyer and Chu, 2000). We have made a first step to fill the gap. We propose a CLMSR marketing model to investigate a pattern of customer response function to supplier marketing stimulus. In particular, two features of our model warrant close attention. We operationalize Sako's (1992) three-dimensional interfirm trust concept (i.e., contractual, competence, and goodwill trust) drawn from the Japanese manufacturer–supplier relationships context and investigate a mechanism of their developmental process. We also propose a new CLMSR marketing variable, supplier relationship-specific interaction competence (RSIC), and investigate its role in building customer trust.

Our research findings based on the cross-sectional data submit empirical support for discriminant and nomological validity (see Table 1) of the three facets of customer trust suggested by Sako (1992). The findings not only submit empirical evidence for their distinctive psychological properties but also provide valuable explanatory insight into their properties in terms of their respective antecedents in our model. The unique conceptual domains of the three facets of customer trust are captured by an idiosyncrasy in antecedents or their impact magnitudes across them. While a customer's competence trust in a supplier has customer relationship satisfaction as a sole determinant, contractual and goodwill trust are found to be a function of the two antecedents as hypothesized. They collectively accounted for 64% and 74% of the variance in contractual and goodwill trust, respectively. However, they differed uniquely in their impacting magnitudes. In contractual trust building, customer relationship satisfaction plays a more dominant role, yet in goodwill trust building, its dominant role is replaced by perceived supplier relationship commitment. These findings strongly suggest the criticality of a supplier's ability to project its relationship commitment in a supplier's CLMSR marketing pursuit, as it exerts a more significant influence on a customer's goodwill trust instrumental to a CLMSR.