Eye for an eye: Examining retaliation in business-to-business relationships

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this research is to examine why a buying firm in a marketing channel may retaliate against its supplier. The objective of this paper is thus to understand the individual and organizational variables that may prompt a buying company to retaliate against its supplier following negative critical incidents (NCI).

Design/methodology/approach

Data was collected from 171 retailers associated with one focal manufacturer and analyzed through PLS path modeling procedures.

Findings

Results demonstrate that retaliation is the outcome of individual factors related to a buyer's cognitive (causal attributions) and emotional (anger) processes triggered by NCI as well as organizational forces (trust and dependence) related to more stable characteristics of the interfirm relationship.

Originality/value

Compared with existing contributions, the proposed model adopts a multilevel approach and considers retaliation as the outcome of individual as well as organizational forces. On the individual level, echoing the rapidly growing idea that emotions, not just cognitions, are a relevant object of study within interorganizational relationships, this paper empirically investigates the effect of one negative emotion (anger) and of causal attributions in buyer-seller partnerships. On the organizational level, this research examines the influence of trust and dependence, two central variables in business-to-business marketing theory, which seem closely related to retaliation.

Citation

Vidal, D. (2014), "Eye for an eye: Examining retaliation in business-to-business relationships", European Journal of Marketing, Vol. 48 No. 1/2, pp. 47-67. https://doi.org/10.1108/EJM-03-2011-0173