Relationship Between Direct Selling Distributors’ Interpersonal Trust And Team Performance: Moderate Effect Of Reward Interdependence

Because the direct selling in the past is not transparent enough, consumers easily get suspicious of it and they usually draw an equal sign between a legal distribution company and an illegal pyramid sales scheme which made trust among consumers, direct selling companies and distributors weak. This study explore on the effect of direct selling distributors' reward interdependence and interpersonal trust on team performance. After almost 3 months of contacting and follow-ups with the direct selling company, deducting unqualified research subjects and deducting invalid questionnaires like incomplete questionnaires and similarity in the response of the whole questionnaire, this study received 105 valid questionnaires with a return rate of 61.7%. Partial Least Squares (PLS) method is applied for analysis. The analytical results indicate that ability, benevolence and integrity of up-line distributor have significant positive effect on down-line distributor cognitive trust. Similarly, ability positively and significantly affects affective trust. At the same time, cognitive trust has a positive impact on the emotional trust and team performance. Cognitive trust, affective trust and task interdependence have significant positive effective on team performance. The reward interdependence between up-line and down-line distributors has a positive moderate effect on emotional trust and team performance.