In virtually all marketing channel relationships, one of the parties eventually will engage in an action that another channel member considers potentially destructive for the relationship. How a particular channel member reacts to such an act has implications for the long-term viability and success of the relationship. On the basis of a large data set collected from both a focal supplier and its independent dealers, the authors classify dealers' responses to a supplier's destructive acts by extending the response typology of exit, voice, and loyalty, which is based on Hirschman's seminal writings on responses to decline in organizations and states. This study finds that dealers' reactions are influenced by several antecedent factors: perceived intensity of the supplier's destructive act, the attributions relative to the act, relationship quality before the act, and the level of interdependence between dealer and supplier. The results suggest that these more proximal dealer responses affect subsequent dealer performance and overall perceptions of relationship quality after an act. The authors draw several implications for both dealers and suppliers.

Most managers agree that close cooperative relationships between business partners yield benefits to all parties. However, some question whether these benefits continue as the relationship ages. This article reports on a study designed to answer this question. The study suggests that, however long the relationship, building trust, commitment and the other components of Relationship Marketing (RM) continue to have a positive effect on the performance of business partners. However, it also shows that, over time, the positive effect diminishes. The authors suggest that managers need to recognize this, and to identify the true costs of building relationships so as to judgewhether the diminishing returns justify the effort. Ultimately, managers need to vary their handling of each relationship because standardized RM practices are unlikely to be effective.

The ever-accelerating pace of technological change has heralded an increasing number of new product introductions involving products that defy classification within existing categories. With the advent of these so-called "really new products," new questions about the influence of prior knowledge on consumer learning emerge. Chief among these is whether and to what extent prior knowledge plays a role in the comprehension of such products. Applying analogical learning theory to address this question, this investigation presents evidence indicating that analogy provides an effective link to the structural knowledge needed for consumers to learn about truly novel innovations. Reflecting this, subjects who engaged in analogical processing of new product information were more focused in their processing than subjects who processed the same information in the absence of analogy. Moreover, there was evidence

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