Manufacturer-distributor relationship in a developing country: transactional or relational?

Abstract

Manufacturer distributor relationships show satisfaction to be an important issue. In a concentrated market and in the developing country of Indonesia, satisfaction may interplay with dependence, conflict, long term orientation, role performance, and trust. We analyse these constructs from a transactional and/or a relationship marketing perspective. A descriptive statistic of 30 paired samples of medium to big scale Indonesian manufacturers with their connecting distributors reveals that the relationship tends to be relational in nature, but with some exceptions. Thus, further model developments are suggested.