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This study aims to investigate the effects of perceived tangible and intangible resource inequity and the moderating effect of long‐term orientation on future collaboration.

Outcome and moderating measures were developed using structural equation modeling. Data were collected at the project level of customer‐supplier relationships via survey among German and Swiss firms. The results were generated with regression and subgroup analyses.

The higher the negative tangible inequity or intangible inequity, the lower the customers' willingness to collaborate on future projects with suppliers. However, negative intangible inequity showed a stronger negative effect than negative tangible inequity. When long‐term orientation is in the model, the effects of inequity are stronger in short‐term relationships.

The study extends equity theory and provides a fruitful basis for future research at the project level of the customer‐supplier relationships. Specifically, since the effects of negative intangible inequity are stronger than the effects of negative tangible inequity, intangible resources may be more important than tangible resources to the future of customer‐supplier relationships. Since prior research does not delineate between tangible and intangible inequity, this is a unique finding and an important contribution to the application of equity theory in business. Cultural homogeneity is a limitation of the study. Furthermore, a longitudinal study could add insight.

This research offers a distinction between the effects of tangible and intangible resource inequity; it disaggregates the concepts of tangible and intangible resource inequity and tests the effects of either “positive inequity” (i.e. receiving more than deserved) or “negative inequity” (i.e. receiving less than deserved); and it separates short‐term from long‐term oriented companies to allow for a more discrete analysis, than prior approaches, of the effects of inequity on the propensity for future collaboration.

Companies involved in collaborative channel relationships aim at creating in sum a higher value than each channel partner could achieve on its own. There is relatively little empirical insight into what determines the sharing of the “value pie”. Therefore this paper aims to investigate determinants of value sharing in channel relationships.

Data for testing the hypotheses were collected through a telephone survey of managers from large industrial firms in the automotive, food, engineering and chemicals industries in Germany. Complete information on the study's questions was received from 142 firms, accounting for a response rate of 40.1 percent.

The results show that customer companies frequently receive larger shares of the value pie, while in most cases the value pie is shared equally. Furthermore, relationship quality, supplier motivation approaches, the goals of the channel relationship as well as the applied sharing principle are all influential in determining how value is shared in corporate practice.

Because all companies in the sample were selected from only four industries, all are among the largest companies in their specific industry, and all are headquartered in Germany, the generalizability of the results is unquestionably limited to similar firms.

Customer as well as supplier firms should incorporate the identified determinants in their partnering and sharing decisions, since they have an impact on the long‐term benefit of channel relationships.

The underlying determinants of the sharing process and the value allocation to the channel partners have so far received little research attention. This paper addresses this situation.