Organizational Commitment in Mexican Small and Medium-Sized Firms: The Role of Work Status,Organizational Climate,and Entrepreneurial Orientation*

In this study, we examine the role of individuals' commitment in small and medium-sized firms. More specifically, we argue that employees will commit themselves to their firm based on their current work status in the firm, their perception of the organizational climate, and the firm's entrepreneurial orientation. We also examine how individuals' commitment affect the actual effort they exert vis-à-vis their firm. The study's hypotheses are tested by applying quantitative analyses to survey data collected from 863 Mexican small and medium-sized businesses. We found that individuals' position and tenure in the firm, their perception of psychological safety and meaningfulness, and the firm's entrepreneurial orientation all are positively related to organizational commitment. We also found a positive relationship between organizational commitment and effort. Finally, our findings show that organizational commitment mediates the relationship between many of the predictor variables and effort. We discuss the limitations and implications of our findings and provide directions for future research.     

National advertising,dual-channel coordination and firm performance

With the rapid development of e-commerce, many manufacturers nowadays opt to open an online channel to engage in direct online sales. The mix of retailing with an online channel adds a new dimension of competition and complementarity to a product's distribution channels. Our model focuses on the strategic effect of the manufacturer's national advertising on alleviating the channel competition. We use a game-theoretical model to show that opening an online channel with the added national advertising effectively alleviates the channel conflict and thus helps improve the whole channel and each channel member performance. Depending on the different product categories and the degree of channel substitutability, the manufacturer's investment in the national advertising also will be different. The value of national advertising increases as product is more compatible with online sales and channel substitutability increases.     

Do offline and online go hand in hand? Cross-channel and synergy effects of direct mailing and display advertising

Despite the rise of digital, direct mailing as a marketing communication tool remains relevant and widely applied in practice. Nevertheless, research into the effectiveness of direct mailing in the online environment is scant. Key questions that remain entail how direct mails affect different online and offline consumer activity metrics throughout the purchase funnel and how they interact with digital marketing communication tools. The current paper, therefore, investigates these two questions by conducting two studies. First, we focus on the effect of direct mailing on zip-code level upper, middle, and lower funnel performance metrics over time by analyzing quasi-experimental data from a large European insurance firm. The results reveal that direct mailing significantly influences consumer activity metrics in the online channel (i.e., online search and clicking behavior), in support of cross-channel effects of direct mailing. Moreover, direct mailing is shown to be effective throughout the purchase funnel, both directly and indirectly, with a positive net sales effect. Second, we study the joint effect of direct mailing and display advertising by analyzing field experiment data from the same insurance firm. The results show positive synergy between direct mailing and display advertising. Therefore, despite the rise of digital, direct mailing still serves as an effective marketing tool, both by itself and in combination with digital marketing.     

The influence of in‐store personnel on online store value: An analogical transfer perspective

In today’s multichannel retail environment, consumers’ experiences in one channel influence their perceptions of another channel. Specifically, consumer evaluations of a firm’s online store have been found to be influenced by consumer interactions with the firm’s in‐store personnel. This paper is among the first to address this assumption and test it empirically. Drawing upon the analogical transfer paradigm, we propose hypotheses and accordingly model in‐store personnel’s competence and friendliness as determinants of online store usefulness, online store enjoyment, and online store value. Using consumer data collected from two Dutch multichannel retailers, we test this model with partial least squares modeling. The results provide clear support for the model and confirm that consumers may use characteristics of in‐store personnel as analogies when evaluating a firm’s online store. Implications for research and retail managers are discussed.     

Redesigning after-sales service: Impact on incumbent product distribution channels

With the growth of multi-channel retailing, many firms that have traditionally relied upon third-party service providers to offer after-sales service (AS) have introduced direct AS channel. While there exist a few studies that examine the effects of adding a direct sales channel on the sales revenue of incumbent channels, there are no studies investigating the effects of adding direct AS channel. This study tries to fill this research gap by exploring cross-channel effects of including AS through the firm's direct brand stores on performance (i.e., revenue, assortment width, and extent of upselling) in both direct and indirect channels. A matched difference-in-difference quasi-experimental design was used to compare the sales outcomes of test and control groups using a five-year longitudinal dataset from a large dual-channel consumer durables firm. Results reveal that providing AS through the firm's direct channel has a positive significant effect on the revenue and upselling in the indirect channel, but no significant impact on assortment width in the indirect channel. However, unlike hypothesized, it results in significantly lower revenue, assortment width, and upselling in the direct channel. We interpret these negative effects as arising from customer confusion and perceived retail crowding. Overall, our research highlights that implementation of going direct with AS should be done with utmost care. Our findings would serve as a building block for future studies that are conducted to understand the dynamic cross-channel effects of introducing direct AS, and would be useful for drawing comparisons and contrasts.     

Driving In-Role and Extra-Role Brand Performance among Retail Frontline Salespeople: Antecedents and the Moderating Role of Customer Orientation

The organizational frontline in retail represents the frontline for an entire supply chain. This channel structure distances the branded supplier from the end consumer and makes the supplier dependent on a retail frontline salesperson that (1) it does not control and (2) also represents competing brands. This study reveals mechanisms that the supplier may use to influence retail frontline salespeople. We demonstrate the importance of consumer marketing programs and supplier representatives in building brand identification between the manufacturer’s brand and the retail frontline employee that translates into increased brand sales, while also revealing the role of rewards programs in stimulating brand-specific extra-role behaviors. Interestingly, retail frontline customer orientation, built by the retailer, diminishes the effect of brand extra-role behaviors toward the focal brand on the focal brand’s sales, providing an informal control mechanism for retailers to protect its objectives. The results of this study have powerful ramifications for both retailers and suppliers in achieving both their mutual, and sometimes differing, objectives related to the retail frontline.     

Cross-channel effects of omnichannel retail marketing strategies: A review of extant data-driven research

The authors review 50 empirical retailing research papers that have appeared over the last 20 years to take stock of what we know, need to know better, and do not know yet about within-retailer cross-channel effects of omnichannel retail marketing strategies on (a) consumer responses over their purchase journeys, i.e., online and/or offline search, purchase intention, frequency, amount, returns, loyalty, and (b) the retail firm's aggregate outcomes (e.g., sales, costs, profits, product returns) by channel and overall. Specifically, the authors focus on five strategies: (1) the addition of online channel by an offline retailer; (2) the addition (or subtraction) of offline channels by an online retailer; (3) addition of mobile shopping channel (website and/or app) by offline and/or online retailer; (4) cross-channel integration strategies; and (5) retail marketing mix strategies. The author/s integrate findings from empirical research on these strategies into a number of ‘insights’ about ‘what we know’. Prominent among these are the following: Adding a transactional online channel to an offline channel improves the retailer's overall sales even though offline channel sales can be cannibalized to some degree. Adding an offline channel by an online retailer, however, boosts online channel sales as well as overall sales of the retailer. Similarly, adding a mobile shopping channel usually increases customer purchase frequency and amount and overall sales of the retailer in the long-term. Strategies for greater cross-channel integration generally have a positive effect on a retailer's overall performance while online advertising has positive effects on offline channel consideration and sales as well as overall sales of a multichannel retailer. Other insights or findings that need further study or open questions are also identified. The paper closes with managerial implications of the derived empirical insights, and suggestions for future research.     

Investigating the Moderating Effects of Perceived Technological Change on Sales Force Acceptance

ABSTRACT

Purpose: Prior literature has shown that the acceptance of new technologies can improve the long-term performance of sales forces and firms. However, new technologies are likely to introduce obstacles to acceptance, especially for those technologies that represent a massive change for the user. Sales force members who drastically change their work processes in order to integrate a technology sacrifice both time and effort and may be distracted from their primary goals (e.g. hitting deadlines or sales goals). Thus, we investigate how perceived technological change can negatively moderate individual motives to accept a new technology. Furthermore, we analyze how managerial support can help overcome the acceptance issues caused by perceived technological change.

Methodology/approach: Data for this study was collected from 163 sales force members via an online survey. Respondent data was collected using a private market research firm that provides access to online panels. We utilize structural equation modeling for factor analysis and ordinary least squares (OLS) regression for testing the hypotheses.

Findings: We find that perceived technological change negatively moderates the influence of individual goal orientation on to acceptance of new technology. We also find that managerial support, as opposed to team goal commitment, will positively moderate an individual’s goal orientation onto acceptance of new technology. This suggests that managerial support is necessary in order to encourage acceptance of technologies that present drastic change for the end user. Post-hoc analysis takes a deeper look into potential curvilinear effects, a three-way interaction, and differences among categories of technologies. This analysis reveals that the negative influence of perceived technological change specifically affects the acceptance of behavioral-based technologies, as opposed to outcome-based technologies, thus necessitating the moderating influence of managerial support.

Contribution: This study demonstrates the acceptance issues presented by technologies associated with drastic perceived technological change. This article identifies and suggests how to more appropriately enhance acceptance of technologies that introduce drastic changes by sales force employees, thus enhancing potential long-term organizational performance.     

Understanding the link between customer feedback metrics and firm performance

Practitioners utilise customer feedback metrics (CFM's) to monitor business performance. However, the influence of CFM's on firm performance has been ignored. Thus, this paper aims to examine the effects of CFM's on firm performance. Our study collected data about CFM's, marketing efforts, and financial performance over the period 2005–2020 from American Customer Satisfaction Index. The present study used a multiple regression panel analysis to investigate the influence of different CFMs (i.e., SAT, Top-2-Box, NPS proportion, NPS value, and CES) on firm performance (i.e., gross margin, sales growth, and Tobin's Q), moderating by operating environment factors (i.e., munificence, power, and dynamism). Our results revealed that Top-2-box is the best predictor CFM's to compare firms in online booking, hotels, and online shopping industries, while consumer satisfaction is the best predictor for electronic and fixed telecom industries. CES is the best CFM's to compare companies in restaurants industries. Moreover, NPS is the best metric to compare different companies in holiday parks industries. The results provide considerable managerial implications for effective use of resources regarding investing in most suitable CFM's to enhance firm performance.     

Power-Dependence and Reseller Influence on SMEs' Continued Use of Online Direct Sales Channels: An Empirical Study

A dual-channel model with a physical sales channel and an online direct sales channel (ODSC) frequently causes channel conflicts. Small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) using such a model may be forced to suspend ODSC to ease conflicts and maintain traditional resellers. From a channel conflict perspective, this study investigates a few critical factors underlying SMEs' intention to continue with an existing ODSC. We develop a research model by integrating power-dependence theory and the technology acceptance model. Then we construct and administer a survey to a sample of US SMEs currently using the dual-channel model. Partial least squares regression is employed to analyze the data and evaluate the impact of four key factors on SMEs' continuance of ODSCs: perceived business value of ODSCs, perceived ease of continuance with ODSCs, reseller dependence, and reseller forceful actions. Findings of the study contribute to the understanding of supplier-reseller relationships and continued use of information technologies among SMEs.     

Working capital management,corporate performance,and financial constraints

This paper examines the linkage between working capital management and corporate performance for a sample of non-financial UK companies. In contrast to previous studies, the findings provide strong support for an inverted U-shaped relation between investment in working capital and firm performance, which implies the existence of an optimal level of investment in working capital that balances costs and benefits and maximizes a firm's value. The results suggest that managers should avoid negative effects on firm performance because of lost sales and lost discounts for early payments or additional financing expenses. The paper also analyzes whether the optimal working capital level is sensitive to alternative measures of financial constraints. The findings show that this optimum is lower for firms more likely to be financially constrained.     

Olfactory priming on consumer categorization,recall, and choice

Consumer choices are mostly regulated by pleasurable experiences that arise outside of the individuals' awareness in response to sensory attributes. This research examines the unconscious mechanism underlying consumers' behavior in response to odors applying the priming approach. Five experiments show that individuals' responses to odors involve two mechanisms, one affective (affective priming) and one associative (semantic priming) that impact consumers' categorization, recall, and choice. We found that when individuals perceive an odor as pleasant, their memory for odor-congruent brand logos (Experiment 1), and categorization of odor-congruent visual objects (Experiment 2) is improved. Unpleasant odors, instead, improve the categorization of odor-congruent visual objects only when they are made salient (Experiments 3 and 4). A pleasant odor diffused in the environment also drives consumers toward odor-congruent choices (Experiment 5), providing evidence that the incidental exposure to odors may induce affective and semantic associations with unrelated objects and behaviors. We also demonstrate that olfactory cues might be more effective than other modality (visual) stimuli to drive consumer responses. An implication for marketing is that odors employed in retail settings not only may induce an experience of pleasure but also promote specific consumer responses, such as categorization, recall, and choice.     

Enduring Attitudes and Contextual Interest: When and Why Attitude Surveys Still Matter in the Online Consumer Decision Journey

Consumers leave traces of key interest to managers on their journey to purchase. Next to traditional survey-based attitudes, readily available online metrics now show aggregate consumer actions. But how do survey response metrics and online action metrics relate to each other? To what extent do they explain and predict brand sales across consumer categories? This article shows that surveys and online behavior provide complementary information for brand managers. Times series data for 32 brands in 14 categories reveal low correlations but substantial dual causality between survey metrics and online actions. Combining both types of metrics greatly increases the model's power to explain and predict brand sales in low-involvement categories. By contrast, high-involvement categories do not gain much from adding survey-based attitudes to a model including online behavior metrics. The authors synthesize these generalizations in a new framework relating enduring attitudes to the contextual interest expressed by online actions. This new framework helps managers assess both types of metrics to drive brand performance depending on whether their goal is short-term sales or long-term brand health.     

Retail services and firm profit in a dual-channel market

With the rapid development of the Internet, many manufacturers nowadays use online technology to engage in direct sales. The mix of retailing with a direct channel adds a new dimension of competition and complementarity to a product's distribution channels. Our model focuses on the strategic role played by the retail services in a dual-channel competitive market. The manufacturer uses a direct channel as an effective tool to motivate the retailer to improve its retail services and profits from it. While operated by the manufacturer to motivate retailer to perform more effectively from the manufacturer's perspective, the direct channel may not always be detrimental to the retailer because the retailer can obtain a lower wholesale price from the manufacturer and a higher sales volume from the improved retail services. In our research, our results suggest that the improved retail services effectively alleviate the channel competition and conflict and improve the supply chain performance in a competitive market.     

Live streaming commerce from the sellers’ perspective: implications for online relationship marketing

ABSTRACT

Live streaming has recently become a popular direct selling channel which offers small, self-employed sellers unseen levels of consumer interaction and engagement. While the extant research focused on consumer motivation and intention to shop via live streaming, little is known from the seller’s perspective. Indeed, the potential advantages of live streaming commerce are accessible to everyone, but sellers experience different levels of success with this medium. Using a mixed quantitative and qualitative approach, this study analyses Facebook data of live streaming sellers to assess the nature and extent of engagement metrics, and delineate the dynamic, interactive live streaming sales process. We identify four sales approaches and twelve strategies adopted in acquiring and retaining customers. This typology of sales approach representing seller-focused antecedents is mapped against the relationship process and outcomes to provide a framework for understanding relationship mechanisms in live streaming commerce.     

Understanding Interactive Online Advertising: Congruence and Product Involvement in Highly and Lowly Arousing,Skippable Video Ads

Interactive online media are an increasingly preferred format for users and advertisers, and skippable online video advertisements are common on social media networks such as YouTube. The specific features and influences of this interactive marketing tool demand further consideration. Focusing on effective tactics, this article investigates the influence of introducing high-arousal and low-arousal stimuli on skippable ad effectiveness (i.e., ad acceptance, ad attitude, brand attitude, and ad intrusiveness), with the potential moderation of context congruency and product involvement. A pretest and three studies confirm that high-arousal ads are watched for longer time and are more effective in congruent contexts. Users' product involvement determines the intrusiveness of high- and low-arousal skippable ads. These findings, along with their practical implications for this novel setting, provide further directions for research too.     

Impact of positioning strategies on service firm performance

This research examines the application of positioning strategies of retail service firms in Texas. Four in-depth qualitative case studies and covert observation methods provide candid subterranean insight into retail positioning in a dynamic marketplace. “Branding”, “service”, “value for money” and, to a lesser extent, “reliability” and “attractiveness” positioning strategies emerge as the most dominant positioning strategies, although emphasis placed on each varies from firm to firm. Furthermore, all of the firms achieve acceptable sales and favorable consumer perceptions when employing these positioning strategies. Desired profits, return on investment (ROI), and market share are associated with these positioning strategies although not as “sales” and favorable “consumers' perceptions”. The results further show that the pursuit of multiple positioning strategies relates to multiple performance indicators. The paper concludes by providing normative suggestions and discussing theoretical and managerial implications.     

Pre-launch Prediction of Market Performance for Short Lifecycle Products Using Online Community Data

Prediction of sales for short life-cycle products can be problematic. Generic predictive models based on past launches may provide only crude historic data which are unsuited for distinctive, innovative products. This paper investigates the role of online communities in providing pre-launch data to predict post-launch sales. We argue that levels of awareness, word-of-mouth, expectations, and adoption intention prevailing within an online community for an upcoming product have an independent direct effect on the product's future sales. Additionally, we test the complementarity effect of these community variables by introducing a higher order construct called Pre-release Community Buzz, to demonstrate the incremental explanatory power of using pre-launch community variables to predict post-launch sales. Data for community variables were collected from a movie-based online community, and analyzed using Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM). We found strong support for both direct and complementarity effects of community variables in predicting a movie's opening week sales. We also found that community variables mediate the effects of generic predictor variables such as MPAA ratings, star cast, production budget and competition on opening week sales. Tests for robustness demonstrated the value of community variables. Models which included community variables had higher predictive power than those without. Implications for theory and practice are presented.     

Consumer Product Redistribution

Abstract

Formats for product redistribution are emerging and evolving, creating alternative channel options for consumers' disposition of unwanted possessions. These retail formats operate in both informal (e.g., garage sales) and formal (online auctions) economies. As consumers participate in redistribution channels, some retailers are confronted with new competition and the potential for declining sales. This article expands on both recycling and disposition literature by examining consumer disposition behavior and the flow of used products through various redistribution channels. Strategies are offered to address consumer disposition behaviors as well as to assist retailers in combating traditional and non-traditional competition.