In daily life, people frequently build relationships with each others. A relationship means a connection between people. Business can hardly survive without external relationships. To make profits, firms must sale products or services. When companies develop a service or create a product, connections and relationships with suppliers and customers are required for successfully doing business. Hence, firms must understand how to create successful relationships with their partners; and this issue has become critical for gaining success.
Buyer–supplier relationships have become a popular research issues in the past few decades. Most of the literatures on buyer-supplier relationships contributed to how relationship marketing leads to enhanced sales performance by improved buyer-supplier relationships (Humphreys & Williams, 1996; Nyaga, Whipple, & Lynch, 2010).
Moreover, many researchers are focused on how to effectively develop partnerships to enhance the possibility of reciprocity likelihood in the future (Bodur & Grohmann, 2005;
Dorsch & Kelley, 1994). Although, no research has explained the returns from Taiwanese business-to-business investments in relationship marketing programs, or has documented how to leverage these investments for Taiwanese purchasing executives.
Interestingly, most of scholars inquire the antecedents and consequences of buyer-supplier relationship investment in Western and Chinese society separately, by using Western theories such as buyer-suppler relationship and relationship marketing, and Chinese cultural values theories such as guanxi, respectively, and independently.
Taiwan's society, economic and business systems in particular, however, is not only
deeply influenced by Western mind thoughts for a long time, but is also rooted on and influenced by the Chinese cultural system. Western management theories are widely deployed by Taiwanese business managers in their daily work; their initiatives, however, it is also impacted by Chinese cultural values at the same time. Therefore, Taiwan is a special society where its business operations are affected by both Eastern cultural values and Western management theories.
Gift-giving some also referred to it as gifting, is taking place in all societies. A gift can be tangible or intangible goods or services. People, Chinese people in particular, normally give business gifts when they visit their business partners or customers. For example, when customers or business partners has problems, they can give them a hand such as postpone lead time or change product quality to tide over the difficulties.
Gift-giving in a business-to-business (B2B) context is one of the common methods for maintaining relationship with business partners. It is a common way to cultivate relationships and reinforce trust, caring and commitment between the parties (D’Souza, 2003). Gifts are also deemed as voluntary benefits without favors in return; the recipient, however, may feel obligated to reward the giver through the gift (Bruhn, 1996).
Gift-giving in both China and Taiwan is a significant social activity. Through the act of gift-giving, people show their respects and apologies to other people, and cultivate long-term relationship. When people get paid, they will expect to pay back in the future (LaGaipa, 1977; Nye, 1979). In Business-to-business (B2B) context, therefore, gift giving by the buyers may allow the opportunity to ask a favor in business deals with their suppliers in the future; but suppliers can also, through mutual reciprocity, establish and enhance long-term relationships with their customers.
quite different with the Western concept of relationship. Guanxi practice is claimed to be able to reduce efforts of the foreign managers while conducting business in Chinese society (Pearce & Robinson, 2000) . Recently, Western scholars are highly concerned about its effects on business relationships (Ambler, Styles, & Xiucun, 1999; Dunfee &
Warren, 2001). Guanxi is a network of relationship which is base on friendship and affection, and it can attain reciprocity obligation by gift exchange (Pearce & Robinson, 2000) . When you need a favor, you can practice guanxi to exchange for it and take the advantage from it. In the past, people in Chinese society will, through giving high value gifts such as high-end products, cash, etc., exchange for resources or opportunities.
Since Taiwan enterprises’ operations are deeply based on Western management theories, this study will use Taiwan's enterprises as research subjects to see if their operation is also impacted by the Chinese cultural values, and inquire the relationship between these two types of relationship building skills. The main stream of gift-giving researches has primarily focused on how gifts influence the relationships; but, scholars used Mainland China or Hong Kong as the research subjects (Joy, 2001; Qian, Razzaque,
& Keng, 2007). Thus, Taiwan’s businesses are rooted on a unique context which is composed and an integration of Western management practices and Chinese cultural value. Therefore, this study will combine with Chinese cultural values and Western theory to explore Taiwan's business environment.
1.2 Research Question and Objectives
Most of previous researches explored gift-giving behavior through exchange theory. For example, Belk (1977) indicated that gift giving to have four functions which are economic exchange, social exchange, communication exchange and
socialization. Among those researches, most of scholars discussed gift giving behavior from the perspective of reciprocity theory. For example, Joy (2001) thought reciprocity are the core of gift-giving, since social exchange is concerned about long-term relationships rather than one-off exchange relationship (Molm, 1997). From the opinion of social exchange, relationships are the long-term link. Through relation link people will offer favor to others, and expect those will give feedback in the future. The act of feedback can establish trust and continue to promote the act of exchange. In buyer-supplier relationships, most people also believed a stable and long-term relationship can allow companies take advantage from it.
Based on the reciprocity theory, this study will inquire the effects of business-to-business gift-giving behavior in Taiwan, to see whether the relation among reciprocity likelihood, perceived relationship investment, and attributes of gift-giving, and Chinese cultural values. Gift- giving is a common social behavior in Taiwan. Most of suppliers will send business gift or small gifts during some holidays, special day, or business visits. Though most of scholars agree that the B2B relationship can be enhanced through giving gift such as Bruhn (1996) indicated that gifts as means of fostering business relation; Sherry (1983) also suggested giving an appropriated gift at the right time can develop or maintain a good relationship. A perception of inferior gift value may not be effective in enhancing, or may even decrease this relationship.
Affected by Chinese cultural values, however, gift recipients may judge the gift not only from the objective values of the gifts; their perceptions may still be influenced by the societal value system such as "guanxi", "renqing", and "face".
Despite an extensive amount of research examining the influences of gift-giving on buyer-supplier relationship, researchers have not fully explored this issue in the
context of Chinese cultural values. This paper fills in the gap by proposing an integrative model for interrelating various theories that views gift-giving as a means to investing B2B relationship mediated by Chinese cultural system.
Standing on the above assumptions, this research aims at 2 major objectives. The first objective is to provide insights into the relationship between the purchasing executive perceived sale representative relationship investment and the willingness tend to cooperate with the sales representative in the future by integrating traditional reciprocity approach with the new perspectives of Chinese cultural values. More specifically, this study will try to find out if ganqing, mianzi, or renqing mediate the relation between the purchasing executive and the sale representative the relational outcomes, hoping that the findings will find. The second one is to provide business managers who want to do business with Taiwan's buyers with some practical implications.