Eye for an eye : Examining retaliation in business-to-business relationships

Purpose – The purpose of this research is to examine why a buying firm in a marketing channel may retaliate against its supplier. The objective of this paper is thus to understand the individual and organizational variables that may prompt a buying company to retaliate against its supplier following negative critical incidents (NCI). Design/methodology/approach – Data was collected from 171 retailers associated with one focal manufacturer and analyzed through PLS path modeling procedures. Findings – Results demonstrate that retaliation is the outcome of individual factors related to a buyer's cognitive (causal attributions) and emotional (anger) processes triggered by NCI as well as organizational forces (trust and dependence) related to more stable characteristics of the interfirm relationship. Originality/value – Compared with existing contributions, the proposed model adopts a multilevel approach and considers retaliation as the outcome of individual as well as organizational forces. On the individual level, echoing the rapidly growing idea that emotions, not just cognitions, are a relevant object of study within interorganizational relationships, this paper empirically investigates the effect of one negative emotion (anger) and of causal attributions in buyer-seller partnerships. On the organizational level, this research examines the influence of trust and dependence, two central variables in business-to-business marketing theory, which seem closely related to retaliation.