Ecosystem network health and SMEs’ credit quality
Journal of Business & Industrial Marketing
ISSN: 0885-8624
Article publication date: 2 August 2021
Issue publication date: 15 April 2022
Abstract
Purpose
In industrial and business-to-business (B2B) marketing research, a business network ecosystem is an important antecedent of small- and medium-sized enterprises’ (SMEs’) performance. The purpose of this study is to clarify the direct and indirect effects of ecosystem network health on SMEs’ credit quality.
Design/methodology/approach
The data is collected from a survey of operations managers and financial managers of 282 SMEs in China. Structural equation modeling is used to test the hypotheses, and latent moderated structural equations are used to estimate the moderating effect model.
Findings
This research indicates that ecosystem network health can directly affect SMEs’ credit quality and have an indirect impact on credit quality through value co-creation capability. In addition, better informal institutional arrangements in the ecosystem can amplify the positive effects of network health and value co-creation capability on SMEs’ credit quality.
Originality/value
From an ecosystem perspective, it is necessary to bring the ecosystem characteristics into business scenario and explore their impacts on SMEs’ financing behaviors. This study contributes to B2B marketing research in terms of investigating the role played by ecosystem characteristics and value co-creation capability.
Keywords
Acknowledgements
This study is supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (71872177; 72072174) and National Social Science Research Fund (21AZD015).
Citation
Song, H., Chen, S. and Yu, K. (2022), "Ecosystem network health and SMEs’ credit quality", Journal of Business & Industrial Marketing, Vol. 37 No. 5, pp. 961-974. https://doi.org/10.1108/JBIM-03-2020-0160
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
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