Exchange partners devise and implement contracts to improve performance within a relationship. Detailed, specific contracts provide a blueprint designed to guide desired interfirm behavior, and firms may use the contract to resolve disputes and to ensure the partner fulfills its obligations. Extant research, however, reports contradictory findings on the efficacy of contracts. The objective of our research is to provide a quantitative review of contract specificity and utilization in business-to-business marketing. The findings suggest that specificity and utilization enhance economic performance, relationship quality, and relational norms. Contract specificity is found to discourage opportunism, whereas contract utilization exacerbates opportunism. Theoretical (specific investments, product complexity, and relationship length) and contextual factors (product type, market type, and study location) moderate influences of contractual properties on exchange outcomes. Discussion of these results addresses the implications of the meta-analysis for marketing theory and practice.

交换合作伙伴设计和实施合同以改善关系中的绩效。详细而具体的合同提供了设计蓝图，旨在指导所需的公司间行为，并且公司可以使用合同解决纠纷并确保合作伙伴履行其义务。但是，现有的研究报告了有关合同效力的矛盾结论。我们研究的目的是对企业对企业营销中合同的特殊性和利用进行定量评估。研究结果表明，特异性和利用可以提高经济绩效，关系质量和关系规范。发现合同的特殊性阻碍了机会主义，而合同的使用则加剧了机会主义。理论（特定投资，产品复杂性，和关系长度）和上下文因素（产品类型，市场类型和研究地点）对合同属性对交易结果的影响中等。对这些结果的讨论解决了荟萃分析对营销理论和实践的影响。