This article presents a framework for exploring salesperson(s) resistance to sharing market intelligence in emerging markets in Sub-Saharan Africa. The authors propose that resistance to sharing market intelligence with relevant others, including the firm, coworkers, intermediaries, and sales managers, is a function of various individual, leadership, and organizational (firm) factors. This framework helps researchers understand how and why resistance develops among salespeople. Moreover, implications from these findings are presented to assist practitioners who wish to persuade and encourage African salespeople to share market intelligence for the benefit of their firms. 相似文献
Purpose: Prior literature has acknowledged multi-foci customer loyalties (loyalty to the selling firm and salesperson-owned loyalty) and argued that both entities (selling firms and salespersons) foster customer loyalty through respective loyalty-capturing efforts (relationship investments). However, scholars have not investigated the influences of different types of interfirm relationship-specific investment (RSI) activities and salesperson behaviors (brand-building and guanxi behavior) on customer loyalty to the selling firm and salesperson-owned loyalty, especially their simultaneous (interaction) effects. The current research attempts to address this issue and examines the impacts that RSIs and salesperson behaviors have on customer loyalties.
Methodology/approach: A survey of seller–buyer dyads was conducted to test the proposed theoretical model and hypotheses. Using 192 dyadic data from customers and salespersons in the Chinese business-to-business contexts, this study specifies the direct and interactive effects of sellers’ RSIs and salespersons’ behaviors on customer loyalties.
Findings: Results indicate that selling firms’ loyalty-capturing efforts—property-based and knowledge-based RSIs—have different influences on two types of customer loyalty. Salespersons’ relationship investments—brand-building and guanxi behaviors—also have asymmetric impacts on customer loyalty. Counterintuitively, salespersons’ loyalty-capturing efforts weaken the relationships between firms’ RSIs and customer loyalties.
Originality/value/contribution: This study specifies different types of relationship investments and examines their respective and interactive impacts on two types of customer loyalty—loyalty to the selling firm and salesperson-owned loyalty. The findings indicate that firms’ and salespersons’ efforts may lead to unexpected and unintended effects on multi-foci loyalties. Therefore, the current study enriches our knowledge about multi-foci loyalty management and relationship marketing.
Practical implications: Because firms’ and salespersons’ loyalty-capturing strategies exert positive direct influences on loyalty to the selling firm and salesperson-owned loyalty, both entities may actively leverage relationship investments’ impact on customer loyalty. However, as the interactive effects derived from concurrent loyalty-enhancing activities are negative, firms need to clearly assess the nature and
characteristics of their relationship with buyers and properly design relationship investments and guide salesperson behaviors. Managers should use property-based RSIs as a primary safeguard of customer loyalty to the selling firm. Meanwhile, internal branding and training programs can help salespersons develop brand building behaviors and better understand the potential unintended outcomes that different behaviors may induce. Aligning a branding goal between the firm and salespersons can benefit both parties while avoiding counter-productive outcomes. 相似文献
Intangibility has long been studied as a unidimensional construct with the focus being placed upon the physical element. This paper explores the effects of three unique intangibility dimensions on a consumer's ability to evaluate goods and services, and the perceived risk (PR) associated with the transaction. The authors examine these relationships in purchase environments that include both traditional bricks-and-mortar retailers and the Internet. Their investigation further incorporates prior knowledge as a moderating factor into the proposed framework. This allows for a thorough comparison of the effects and relationships that exist between intangibility and its consequences in general, evaluation difficulty (ED) and perceived risk (PR) in particular. The authors develop hypotheses pertaining to the proposed model and test them with two experiments. The empirical results are broadly supportive of the hypotheses. Theoretical and managerial implications to the services marketing literature are discussed. 相似文献