기회주의적 유통망에 대한 네거티브 관리 전략: 게임이론적 접근 (Using Negative Strategy Against Opportunistic Distributors: Game Model Approach)

서지정보

· 발행기관 : 한국마케팅학회
· 수록지 정보 : 마케팅연구 / 23권 / 4호 / 173 ~ 195페이지
· 저자명 : 김성환, 홍성준

초록

기존의 공급자-판매자간 관계를 다룬 연구들은 신뢰 구축, 장기적 관계 설정, 효과적인 관계구조 등 관계마케팅의 관점에서 대안을 제시하는 경우가 많았다. 그러나 표면적으로 신뢰 관계 구축에 성공하였다 하더라도 여전히 판매자 즉, 유통망들의 기회주의적 행태에 의한 과다한 인센티브의 지급 등으로 경쟁력의 상실은 물론 재무적인 위협까지 받고 있는 상황이다. 기존 연구가 개념적이고 현실적인 문제에 대하여 해결 대안을 제시하지 못하고 있는 상황에서 본 연구는 게임이론을 접목하여 이론적 모형을 구축하였다. 이를 위해 재무 분야의 금융기관과 고객간의 관계에서 평판과 인센티브의 영향을 밝힌 Kim(2003)의 논문을 적용하되, 유통망의 유형별로 균제상태(steady state) 모형을 개발, 적용하였다. 구체적으로 모형의 단순화를 위하여 독점적 지위를 가진 경우와 경쟁체제에서의 공급자의 상황으로 시장 상황을 나누었다. 유통망의 기회주의적 행태에 대한 전략으로 지원중단, 계속 지원으로 구분하고 논리 전개 과정에서 내생적인 평판이론과 인센티브의 역할을 고려하여 모형을 설정하였다.
연구결과 기회주의적 행태의 반복으로 말미암아 손실이 우려되는 경우에 기업은 특정한 조건들이 충족되는 경우에 과감히 지원을 중단함으로써 기회주의적 유통망에 대하여 강력한 경고 메시지를 전달하고, 그 결과로 그러한 행태의 유통망을 시장에서 퇴출시키거나 경쟁기업으로 보냄으로써 상대적으로 더 나은 유통망을 구축할 수 있음을 보여 주었다. 이 모형에서 더욱 중요한 점은 유통망 전략에 대해서 모든 기업에 적용될 수 있는 관계강화라거나 적절한 지원 수준 유지 등을 개별적으로 강조하지 않고, 시장구도와 경쟁사의 대응전략, 그리고, 기존 유통망의 분포 및 기회주의적 성향, 개별 유통망의 기회주의적 성향에서 발생할 손실의 규모, 지원중단 등의 의사결정에 따른 시장에 주는 영향이 하나의 실체로 함께 검토되어야 함을 보여 주었다.

영어초록

Studies on opportunism in marketing channels typically examine different characteristics of relationships between manufacturing firms and their distributors, such as trust and dependence in terms of their influence on some desired goals. In these contexts, acquiescence and cooperation between firms and their distributors are consistently highlighted to attain desirable results from successful relationship management. However, gaps remain wide between such academic suggestions and practical implementation. In most cases, existing research related with channel management does not provide any proper solution or discussion at least for opportunistic behaviors of marketing channels other than emphasizing mostly known factors in the fields like strengthening informal relationships with their financial or non-financial supports. On the contrary, in the real world, firms experience far more complicated situations. While firms are better and do well in understanding the importance of such normative strategies and implementing relational activities without any theoretical and empirical studies than the academia, they usually confront in reality with problematic opportunism still prevalent even after such relation-enhancing activities, mostly due to more advantageous proposals financially or non-financially by competing firms in the industry. With competition in the industry among firms in supporting activities, firms are required to make decisions first as to whether to support or not and, if so, to what extent. Such decision makings relate jointly to strategies of competing firms, changes in net cash flows from each distributor, etc. at the different level of severity in opportunism across the marketing channel.
In the model, distributors monitor the types of their current manufacturing firm and decide whether to continue their relationships depending on supporting activities. We suggest “do support” as an optimal competitive strategy under some conditions and “do not support” in others, depending on competition and cash flows, etc. rather than say “strengthen your relationship with your channel partners”. In the model, distributors also monitor the types of their current manufacturing firms and decide whether to continue their relationships depending on supporting activities. That is, firms act firmly as an optimal strategy against their marketing channels with opportunism, which might increase expenses in supporting them and strengthening relationship with them in order to prevent their repeated opportunistic behaviors in advance. Such negative strategy against opportunistic distributors may result in better payoffs due to the ameliorated distribution with new distributors instead. We also show that such strategy works more efficiently in a competitive market than in a monopolistic market. Unlike Kim(2003) and Alexeev and Kim(2004) that introduced the reputation effects of firms in the study exogenously, the market mechanism simply with new entrants in the distribution channel in each period after eliminating incumbent distributors showing opportunistic behaviors can lead to better payoffs. This implies that firms might attain better payoffs in the long run by giving up net cash flows from current opportunistic distributors in the short run, or aggressively make best of such opportunistic distributors to harm the competitive firms financially, by intentionally sending them to the competitors and acquiring new distributors instead.
In this paper, we show that competition among firms in supporting their marketing channels with different or same strategies make situations very complicated, regarding otherwise a simple decision of supporting their marketing channel, if opportunism for higher incentives pervades. Our model shows whether it is better to support their channels or not, after considering net cash flows from different strategic combinations in the world of credible threats by their distributors, and whether there exists a steady-state Nash equilibrium in the sequential games. In the steady-state game models, we study optimal channel strategies with respect to the behaviors of four different types of distributors with opportunism depending on their expected market performances and compare their expected payoffs from different channel strategies of firms in competition. In the market, firms can have distributors, who behave with loyalty or opportunism depending on their expected cash flows from operation in the future, and who are new entrants or existing distributors in each period. Distributors may play opportunistic when they have poor performance unexpectedly or intentionally in order to maximize their utility. Thus, distributors who cannot make sufficient net cash flows may leave for new sponsors, if any, while they leave the market in the case of monopoly. The effect of supporting and expelling such opportunistic distributors might have a strong reputation effect on the players in the market in general, though we do not include explicitly the reputation effect in this study. We also exclude the possibility of mixed strategy by all the players. We basically compare the payoffs of a firm in a monopolistic market and those of a firm in the competitive market, given the same or different strategies. By comparing payoffs from the models for firms dealing with opportunistic distributors, we have found that a competitive firm is less likely to support such distributors than a monopolistic firm. The result is mainly due to the adverse effects of being lenient against such detrimental distributors, keeping them by a firm for the short- term benefit and thus getting more of such distributors from its competitors later. In the basic models developed, firms are assumed symmetric for simplicity in many aspects like cost structure, customer profile, etc. while they are asymmetric in information regarding the strategies of their competitors and the types of their distributors. Based on the results, we also discuss the effects of asymmetric between firms. In general, firms with better financial status, better customer profile, or higher expected returns are more likely to be tough against such opportunistic distributors while financially constrained firms are more vulnerable to their threats.

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