Time Lost forever: Relational bonds of watch manufacturers with retailers in India

Purpose: This study identifies the critical elements of relationship management required to be studied in distribution sciences to create a relational bond of watch manufacturers with their retailers in India. The offline watch retail market is undergoing a rapid transformation due to technology intervention in the product portfolio and the advent of online retailing. The study identifies the interrelationships amongst the constructs of interdependence, trust, affective commitment, and information exchange to form long-lasting relational bonds in the watch industry. Research design, data and methodology: We used a path analysis to investigate the relationship between interdependence, trust, affective commitment, and information exchange. Data has been collected from 143 watch retailers using judgmental sampling method. Results: The data analysis suggested the establishment of measurement and structural model. The absolute and relative goodness of fit models in the causal analysis are 0.628 and 0.959 suggesting a sufficient fit index. Based on the analysis of direct and indirect effects, the results indicate that trust fully mediates the effect of interdependence and information exchange of retailers with the manufacturer. Conclusions: Trust plays an important role in driving commitment and information exchange between watch manufacturers and retailers. Interdependence in the manufacturer-channel relationships would lead to affective commitment only when trust exists in the relationship. [AMAWATE, Vibhas.] in Web of Science and Scopus).