In business-to-business markets, suppliers often ask an existing
customer to provide a referral for them (i.e., a supplier-selected
referral), in which the supplier selects a referrer to influence a
specific potential customer favorably. The selection of the referrer is
important because the right referrer providing the right message can
generate business for the supplier. To study supplier-selected
referrals, the authors extend the dyadic source message-recipient
communication framework to propose a framework that incorporates the
supplier and the supplier's management of the communication between the
referrer and the potential customer. They label this framework the
Managed Triadic Communication (MaTriC) framework. The authors conduct
three experimental studies in which they apply the MaTriC framework to
the domain of supplier-selected referrals and focus on the contingent
role of supplier uncertainty. The authors find that the benefits of a
supplier-selected referral are contingent on supplier uncertainty. For
example, their findings imply that an out supplier should focus on
selecting a referrer that would give an all-positive evaluation (vs. a
balanced evaluation), whereas an in supplier should focus on selecting a
highly credible referrer, even if that referral does not provide an
all-positive evaluation of the supplier. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]