Research Article
The Effects of Conflict, Unfairness, and Goal Incongruence on Relationship Dissolution Intention in Buyer-Seller Relationships and the Moderating Effect of Trust
1 Yonsei University, 2 Kyungpook National University
Published: January 2011 · Vol. 40 No. 5 · pp. 1291-1318
Full Text
Abstract
This research investigates conflict, unfairness, and goal incongruity as the promoting factors of dissolution and the moderation effect of trust on the relationship between those factors and dissolution. To test the hypotheses, survey was conducted on the perception of agency managers in the relationship between milk company headquarter(seller) and its agencies(buyers). A total of 370 agencies out of total 1,050 agencies were selected by random sampling. A total of 360 questionnaires were used for the final analysis, for 10 questionnaires were excluded due to missing values. After reliability and validity check using confirmatory factor analysis,moderated multiple regressions approach was used to test the hypotheses. Five hypotheses out of total six hypotheses were statistically significant. As expected in the hypotheses, conflict, unfairness, and goal incongruity increase dissolution intention. Trust has different moderating role on the three paths from antecedents to dissolution intention, respectively. Trust has moderation effect on the conflict's and unfairness' promotion of dissolution intention. In the case of conflict's promotion, trust positively moderates only the magnitude of conflict's influence on dissolution intention. And in the case of unfairness' promotion, trust negatively moderates the magnitude and direction of unfairness' influence on dissolution intention. But,in the case of goal incongruity's promotion, trust has no moderation effect on the promotion process. In an additional analysis to verify whether trust is an independent variable or moderator,trust does not show main effect. It suggest that trust is not an independent variable but a moderator. This result strongly supports our research model. Theoretical contributions and managerial implications of this research are discussed and the limitations and future directions are presented in the part of the end.
