Comparison of the Effects of Giving Gift and Relational Investment on Reciprocity Likelihood in B2B Context in Taiwan

摘要

External relationships are required for running businesses. While rooting on Western management theories to run their businesses, Taiwanese business managers are also affected by Chinese culture, such as giving gift to maintain other's face during business negotiation. Hence, it is interesting to know and compare the effects of these two conducts on business partners' reciprocity likelihood (RL). A structural model was tested with data collected from 125 questionnaires. The results show that both relational investment (RI) and gifting behavior have positive impacts on RL; yet, giving gift, through the mediation of Mianzi(face), exert a stronger affection on RL than RI.