Antecedents of Supplier-Retailer Relationship Commitment: An Empirical study on Pharmaceutical Products in Bangladesh

Relationship marketing strategy is one of the effective options to strengthen firms' market position in this competitive age. Commitment plays central role in exchange relationships between supplier and retailer. Recent literature on antecedents of relationship marketing on inter organizational relations provide evidences that relationship commitment can yield significant benefits for firms. Although a large number of studies have been conducted on antecedents of relationship marketing, none of them covers how these antecedents influence relationship commitment between supplier and retailer. This study proposes and tests a model to examine how supplier-retailer relationship antecedents influence their relationship commitments. Collecting and analyzing survey data of 200 retailers of pharmaceutical products, this study finds significant influences of communication, trust, flexibility, reputation and dependence on relationship commitment. The findings prove that business relationships are more embedded where communication, trust, reputation and dependency can play vital roles. The correlation result shows that all the variables in this relationship are positively correlated. Based on regression results, it is observed that communication has the highest influence on supplier-retailer relationship. This result can be used as the central assumption of success for firms that reach to the top of the quality ladder. Keywords: Relationship, Commitment, Pharmaceutical product