ABSTRACT
Various channel management topics have recently been receiving increasing attention in marketing literature. Discussions of power, conflict, control, and interfirm influence strategies appear frequently, as do models of interorganizational buying behaviour (Stern and Reve 1980; Frazier and Summers 1984; Gaski 1984; Anand and Stern 1985; Gaski and Nevin 1985; Anand 1987). Much of this effort has focused on explaining the relative power of firms; reward and coercive strategies, for example, are proposed as awarded to, or levelled against, organizations. Other marketers, however, suggest that more attention should be devoted to developing models that predict the appropriateness of influence approaches and strategies. This perspective assumes that the negotiation process between organizations actually occurs between individuals or boundary personnel of the respective organizations (Stern and Reve 1980; Frazier 1983; Anderson and Narus 1984; Gaski 1984; Anand and Stern 1985; Anderson and Chambers 1985; Frazier and Sheth 1985).
