High technology marketing channels face environments characterised by high levels of uncertainty and change, which create continual opportunities for regeneration by forming new business relationships and acquiring new high technology. Marketing channels are an important part of the high technology vendor marketing mix for business markets and are affected by marketing decisions made by marketing executives in the UK. To date the study of relationship exit and renewal in high technology marketing channels has not received attention in the literature and the effect of specific factors that operate in the challenging high technology environment have not been investigated. This study employs a sequential mixed methods research design with an initial qualitative phase to identify specific factors of relationship exit and renewal in high technology marketing channels. The results informed a substantial quantitative phase of telephone interviews. The sample includes small-medium business high technology marketing channels in the UK market and 512 interviews were completed, supported by Cisco Systems, IBM and Vodafone. The study extends the voice-exit theory of relationship exit to the high technology marketing channels context by considering voice-exit from relationships with both high technology vendors and high technology products. Analysis confirms cost of exit as an important antecedent of voice-exit; new antecedents are identified: market adoption benefits and compatibility. These antecedents may be specific to high technology marketing channels. The study includes preliminary testing of hypotheses on the operation of voice, based on a single item measure. Four new decision outcomes for high technology marketing channels are identified: Status Quo, Switcher, Loyal Investor and Switch Investor. Decision outcomes leading to the building of new capability based on new technology, Loyal Investor and Switch Investor are the norm in high technology marketing channels. By contrast, Switcher decision outcomes that involve purely changing vendor relationships appear to be rare. Logistic regression models are developed to quantify the relationship between the antecedent factors and the decision outcomes, identifying the variables that discriminate between decision outcomes. Managerial guidance is developed for practising high technology channel managers to help vendors influence the decision outcomes, requiring new channel marketing strategies. Finally, the evolution of high technology channels into channel networks is reviewed and methods for assessing high technology channel networks are presented.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bl.uk/oai:ethos.bl.uk:625134 |
| Date | January 2007 |
| Creators | Moxey, Steven Richard |
| Publisher | University of Manchester |
| Source Sets | Ethos UK |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
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