Abstract: Marketing channels are facing with major changes. In this context, how channel enterprises improve their ability to cope with the environment through learning is an important question that marketing management needs to answer. Organizational learning activities are divided into exploratory learning and exploitative learning. Do these two learning activities have the same effect on innovation ability? In particular, channel members learn from each other on the basis of long-term cooperative relationships, but long-term relationships also have a dark side. Organizational inertia can be divided into Structural inertia and Cognitive inertia. In the channel relationship, structure inertia is expressed as the relationship inertia, it refers to the organization members are locked in the existing relationship, is not willing to invest time and money to establish a new relationship. People with high relationship inertia tend to focus on relationships in their social circle and are less willing to face the risk of breaking up relationships. External information and opinions are filtered to inhibit members' ability to discover new problems. Cognitive inertia is manifested as intellectual laziness. According to the path dependence theory, organizations in stable relationships tend to maintain the status quo and do not accept new things outside the current strategy framework. This inertia is known as knowledge inertia. Knowledge inertia has a negative impact on organizational management and will inhibit the ability of organizations or individual s to solve problems. So what role does this dark side play in channel learning? This paper studies the influence mechanism of channel learning on innovation ability and discusses the mediating effect of organizational inertia and the moderating effect of ambidextrous learning on innovation ability. This paper uses SPSS20 and SMARTPLS3.0 to empirically analyze the questionnaire data of channel managers of 234 small and medium-sized enterprises. The results show that: (1) channel ambidextrous learning has a significant impact on innovation ability; Organizational inertia plays an intermediary role between channel ambidextrous learning and channel innovation. (2) channel learning has a two-way influence on the improvement of innovation ability; There are significant differences between relational inertia and knowledge inertia in the influence process between ambidextrous learning and organizational innovation: exploratory learning overcomes organizational inertia and is conducive to the improvement of innovation ability; exploitative learning to strengthen the inertia of the relationship has a negative effect on the improvement of innovation ability; (3) ambidextrous balance plays a moderating role in the process of learning influencing knowledge inertia.These show that: firstly, channel ambidextrous learning significantly influences innovation ability. Different from the existing researches on organizational ambidextrous learning, the focus of the existing researches is mostly intra-organizational ambidextrous learning, while the channel ambidextrous learning studied in this paper is a kind of inter-organizational ambidextrous learning with long-term relationship. It is found that two kinds of learning activities have different influences on innovation ability: channel exploration learning promotes innovation ability, while channel exploitative learning reduces innovation ability; and the more balanced ambidextrous learning is, the more it can overcome knowledge inertia and promote innovation ability. This conclusion not only extends the application scope of ambidextrous learning theory, but also indicates that channel enterprises should pay special attention to the cultivation of ambidextrous learning behavior in practice and should not fall into a single learning mode. Channel organizations can seek breakthroughs in channel structure, organizational situation and other aspects, overcome knowledge inertia by sublimating old knowledge and exploring new ways, accept new information and learn new knowledge, and better keep up with the pace of the market in the context of “artificial intelligence” era.Secondly, organizational inertia plays an intermediary role in the influence of channel ambidextrous learning on innovation ability. Channel ambidextrous learning is conducive to overcoming organizational inertia, which in turn inhibits innovation. The research shows that channel enterprises can reduce inertia (knowledge inertia and relationship inertia) through exploratory learning to improve their innovation ability. But the exploitative learning activities to overcome the inertia of knowledge at the same time also strengthened the inertia of the relationship, and thus adverse to the ability to innovate. This further reveals the influence mechanism of channel ambidextrous learning on innovation ability: the two kinds of learning activities have different influences not only on innovation ability, but also on the process. Therefore, when channel enterprises conduct ambidextrous learning, there may be two conflicting effects on the improvement of innovation ability caused by exploitative learning, and the indirect impact of exploitative learning on innovation ability depends on its influence on inertia (knowledge inertia and relationship inertia). In practice, channel enterprises can reduce organizational inertia by establishing learning team, learning organization and ambidextrous learning, so as to improve the innovation ability of the organization.Finally, most existing literatures believe that ambidextrous balance has a significant impact on innovation ability, but this study finds that: channel ambidextrous balance only plays a regulating role in overcoming knowledge inertia in channel ambidextrous learning; and when the two kinds of learning activities are highly unbalanced, channel enterprises can better overcome organizational inertia by combining high-intensity channel exploration learning with low-intensity exploitative learning, and thus perform better in innovation ability. This further explains the influence mechanism of channel ambidextrous learning on innovation ability and finds new boundary conditions of possibility for inter-organizational ambidextrous learning theory in the context of long-term relationship. More importantly, it also provides reference suggestions for channel enterprises when they need to balance between the two learning activities in actual business activities. Channel enterprises can reasonably allocate enterprise resources to carry out two kinds of learning activities within the organization, among channel organizations and in a balanced way, so as to overcome inertia, better respond to market changes and carry out channel innovation. In particular, in the actual operation process, when channel enterprises cannot achieve the balance of ambidextrous learning due to the limitations of their organizational structure, resource allocation and development stage, it is more advantageous for channel enterprises to focus on exploratory learning activities for their innovation ability.These research conclusions are beneficial to expand the research field of channel theory, supplement and improve the theoretical framework of channel research, and have certain guiding significance for channel members to improve their ability to cope with the highly changing market environment through ambidextrous learning.

Key words: explorative learning, exploitative learning, relational inertia, knowledge inertia, innovation ability, ambidextrous balance