英语翻译
The Relative Roles of Product and Relationship (Guanxi) Drivers
Bill Merrilees
UNIVERSITY OF NEWCASTLE,AUSTRALIA
Dale Miller
UNIVERSITY OF NEWCASTLE,AUSTRALIA
Not a lot is known about direct selling and especially the newer forms of direct selling,such as multi-level selling and Internet selling.What drives the effectiveness of these systems?The current study takes up one specific aspect of this question by comparing the effectiveness drivers from an Eastern country (China) and a Western country (Australia).Are these drivers different or similar between countries?To operationalize this question,we use a study of direct selling in China by Luk,Fullgrabe,and Yi (1996) as our benchmark.We replicate this study in Australia,making a few minor adaptations and some minor extensions,and we compare the effectiveness drivers in the two countries.The study concludes that in each country both product elements and relationship elements affect direct selling effectiveness,but in relative terms,relationship elements are relatively more important in China.This finding is consistent with other studies comparing Western and Eastern cultures.In China the elements of relationship marketing are more coherent and form a holistic configuration known as guanxi.In Australia there are several separate dimensions (reciprocity,trust,friend-liness,and good personal relationship) of direct selling relationship market-ing.Cultural differences seem to be the main reason for this contrast between the samples from the two countries.J BUSN RES 1999.45.267–273.1999 Elsevier Science Inc.All rights reserved.