Impact of Marketer’s Influence Strategies on Distribution Channel Partners:A Comparison Among Distribution Channel Partners

Distribution channel management is the priority of the marketer. Profitable operation of physical distribution along with sustainable relationship management with channel partners is the need of the hour. In this regard behavioral management of the channel partners is very important for their motivation. Literatures have expressed six various ways to influence channel partners. These six ways are promise, request, threat, legalistic plea, recommendation and information exchange. Further theories have also inferred that these six ways are standard in nature and practice. In this present research we are testing the standardize nature of the influence strategies globally talked about. We have chosen three industries of varying nature and compared the perception of the dealers/distributors vis-à-vis influence strategy executed by marketers. For this purpose we have used multivariate test of equality of vector means between industries pairwise. Finally, this paper concludes with an interesting result that influence strategy requires customized industry specific applications.