Generalizations about trust in marketing channel relationships using meta-analysis

This meta-analysis examines the role of trust in marketing channels. First, the analysis of pairwise relationships involving trust indicates that trust, on average, exhibits a robust and strong relationship with other channel relationship constructs under a wide range of different conditions. Next, we explored systematic patterns of variation in the correlations. The results demonstrate that the use of experiments, samples drawn from multiple industries, and US data tend to produce larger effects than the use of field studies, samples drawn from a single industry, and European data respectively do. Various other methodological characteristics of studies did not have significant effects. Finally, we examined the role of trust in a nomological net, involving some of the most frequently studied antecedents and consequences of trust. We find that trust contributes to satisfaction and long-term orientation over and beyond the effects of economic outcomes of the relationship. Both trust and economic outcomes—not just one or the other—are conducive to relationship marketing success.