Managing Marketing Channel Opportunism: The Efficacy of Alternative Governance Mechanisms

The authors examine three governance mechanisms according to how well they mitigate opportunism in marketing channels. Using the U.S. hotel industry as the research context, the authors investigate how opportunism is limited by (1) ownership, (2) investment in transaction-specific assets, and (3) norms of relational exchange. They also investigate how various combinations of these governance mechanisms affect opportunistic behavior in hotel channels. Overall, the results generally support emphasizing relational norms in managing opportunism in marketing channels. The results also indicate that opportunism can be exacerbated when ownership or investments in transaction-specific assets are accentuated as governance mechanisms.