Personal Selling and Sales Management in the Internet Environment: Lessons Learned

Researchers have suggested that businesses are undergoing a paradigm shift due to the emergence of Internet; a ubiquitous information platform. There is no doubt that its emergence has had and will continue to have considerable impact on business processes and practices. In this special issue of the JMM we address Internet's impact upon the personal selling and sales management processes and practices of contemporary firms. As co-editors of this special issue, we have had a chance to only publish a small set of papers. Therefore, in this editorial we attempt to explicate the lessons learned from the development of the Internet and associated information platforms, with the aim to address the broader issues that have emerged in this area. We specifically divide our discussion into Business to Consumer (B2C), Peer to Peer (P2P), and Business to Business (B2B) lesson. We first review learning from existing practices in the B2C, P2P, and B2B domains. This is followed by a discussion on the impact of the Internet on personal selling and sales management practices. At the end of this editorial, papers in this special issue are discussed with respect to their learning and positioning.     

零售业客户忠诚度与营销策略分析

客户满意度管理是零售业营销环境下提升客户价值、建立和保持客户忠诚的有力工具,而识别客户的体验需求,提高NPS记分是提高零售业客户忠诚度的先决条件。从企业战略实施层面来看,我国零售业提高客户忠诚度是企业可持续发展的核心要素,忠诚的顾客是企业最宝贵的财富。     

The Relationship between Consumers' Unethical Behavior and Customer Loyalty in a Retail Environment

This paper investigates the relationship between two outcomes of relationship marketing – affective commitment and behavioral loyalty – and consumers' unethical behavior. The main objective of the study is to assess whether affective commitment and behavioral loyalty to a store translate into more ethical behavior towards that store, controlling for the variables of age, gender, and ethical beliefs. The study does not rely on a single measurement tool, but is based on ten months' panel data and three different mail surveys targeted at 359 Belgian households. The results provide support for our hypothesis that affective commitment is indeed negatively correlated with consumers' unethical behavior. The same conclusion could not be drawn for the relationship between behavioral loyalty and consumers' unethical behavior. No significant relationship was detected, not even in situations where affective commitment was high. The results hold major implications for retailing practice.     

Using Trade Incentives to Promote Customer Relationships in a Retail Setting

Suppliers and retailers use a variety of techniques designed to motivate salespeople to engage in specific selling behaviors that will provide results that will assist in achieving either the supplier's or retailer's goals. One method that is commonly applied is the sales incentive. This research examines popular forms of incentives to assess the relationships that exist between the incentives offered and salesperson behaviors. The study also examines the types of incentives commonly used by both suppliers and retailers and salesperson perceptions of these incentives. To accomplish this, 95 salespeople working for a major automotive parts company responded to questions designed to assess their attitudes and behaviors toward incentives. The results provide information which may be valuable to manufacturers, retailers, and academicians as they investigate the use of incentive based compensation programs and sales force behavior.     

Trust,Satisfaction and Loyalty in Customer Relationship Management

SUMMARY

In an attempt to increase customer loyalty amid increasingly competitive business environments, organizations are looking to customer relationship management (CRM) to help provide a solution. In spite of CRM failure rates cited as being as high as 70%, organizations continue to invest hundreds of thousands of dollars on CRM implementations. Attempts of past research to resolve why failure rates are so high have tended to focus on technological factors such as database integration or factors internal to the organization such as system adoption or organizational culture. While these areas are important, reactions of customers may also play a role. This paper uses justice theory to investigate the potential impact that customer involvement in a CRM implementation may have on customer loyalty. Propositions are provided to guide future research.     

Identifying Customer Loyalty Supporting Factors in the Retail Banking Context: An Empirical Examination

This article aims to identify factors which support customer loyalty, either through dedication or by imposing constraints, and subsequently empirically analyzes the relationship between identified factors and the attitudinal and behavioral component of loyalty in the context of retail banking. Data collected from a sample of 293 retail banking customers have been analyzed through structural equation modeling. The study results suggested two constraint promoting factors and one dedication promoting factor which supported loyalty. The study contributes to knowledge by empirically testing the qualitative model and coming out with empirically proven dedication-promoting and constraint-promoting loyalty supporting factors.     

基于服务公平性的顾客满意感与忠诚感关系—面向武汉酒店业的实证研究

在高度竞争的市场环境中,赢得顾客并与顾客维持长久关系是非常重要的,而这种长久关系的建立在很大程度上是以顾客满意为基础的。因此,如何提高顾客满意度、培育和维系忠诚的顾客群体是现代企业生存和发展亟待解决的重要课题。本论文提出了一个包含服务公平性、顾客感知质量、顾客感知价值、顾客满意感和顾客忠诚感概念模型及18项相关研究假设,并在武汉市20家酒店展开了问卷调查．最后采用规范的、科学的实证研究方法对此概念模型和研究假设进行了检验。     

被企业营销管理遗忘的角落：恢复客户关系管理

在买方市场的条件下,争取新客户的成本不断增加,客户更换供应商的俗望增强,客户忠诚度下降。因此,企业在注重预期客户管理和保持现有客户管理的基础上,有必要加强对流失客户的管理。恢复客户关系管理的目标是充分挖掘客户的潜力,尽可能地降低客户流失经企业带来的不良影响,与流失客户重新建立正常的业务关系。恢复客户关系管理的过程包括分析、行动和评估考核三个阶段。客户价值分析、客户流失原因分析和流失客户细分是恢复客户关系管理措施的基础,评估考核是恢复客户关系管理获得成功的重要保证。     

Reconsidering Nonlinearity and Asymmetry in Customer Satisfaction and Loyalty Models: An Empirical Study in Three Retail Service Settings

The use of symmetric linear functional forms to describe the relationships among customer evaluative judgments is omnipresent in services research. However, according to several researchers, the use of symmetric linear functions to model the relationships among customer evaluative judgments leads to serious model misspecification. Although several asymmetric nonlinear functional forms have been proposed, only modest empirical evidence is available on the superiority of these more complex model specifications. Based on a formal empirical comparison in multiple service settings, we find that asymmetric nonlinear functions do not possess superior explanatory power compared to symmetric linear functional forms.     

Shopping Motivation: Investigating the Shopping Process and Outcomes of the Retail Experience at a Craft Fair

The research addresses the question of when people succeed or fail to achieve shopping goals that bring them to a retail outlet, in this case a craft fair, and the consequences of this for customer satisfaction. A quantitative study, carried out with 398 craft fair shoppers, revealed that dimensions of in-store behaviour had various but significant influences on the relationships between prior intentions to pursue certain types of shopping goals and attainment of those goals. Further, the attainment of important shopping goals had a significant effect on consumers' evaluations of the shopping experience and the craft fairs as well as their future behavioural intentions. The main implication of the research is that attempts should be made to facilitate the shopping process and account for consumers with multiple goals.     

汽车服务业服务质量、顾客满意度与顾客忠诚度的实证分析

为了探讨汽车服务行业服务质量、顾客满意度与顾客认知、情感、意向、行为等四类忠诚度之间的关系,我们对广东省7家汽车4S店进行实证调查,结果发现:服务质量对顾客的认知、情感和意向忠诚度有直接的影响;顾客满意度对顾客四类忠诚度都有直接的影响,且顾客满意度对态度忠诚的影响大于其对行为忠诚的影响;在顾客四类忠诚度中,对顾客行为忠诚有直接影响的是认知忠诚和意向忠诚,其中意向忠诚的影响程度较大。     

Approach and Avoidance Motivation: Investigating Hedonic Consumption in a Retail Setting

Retail shopping studies often conclude that desirable shopper behaviors, such as spending more money, indicate underlying approach motivation, while undesirable behaviors, such as leaving the store, indicate underlying avoidance motivation. However, hedonic consumption would seem to provide an opportunity not only for approaching fun and excitement but also for avoiding problems and stress in everyday life. This study investigates approach and avoidance motivations in a hedonic consumption context. Results show that both approach and avoidance motivation lead to heightened hedonic motivations for shopping and to more positive shopper evaluations. Additional investigation reveals several differences by gender and across four shopping contexts. Several theoretical and managerial implications are offered.     

Understanding Customer Engagement and Loyalty: A Case of Mobile Devices for Shopping

This study aims at developing and validating a measurement model for customer engagement with specific focus on mobile devices for shopping. Further, role of customer engagement in building customer loyalty is explored. The research in this investigation used three studies for developing customer engagement scale and validating the proposed model. The study involved data collection from experts and users through varied methods including in-depth interviews, and surveys. Further structural equation modeling was used to analyze the data. Findings of this study include development and validation of customer engagement as second order construct arising out of six different customer experiences - social-facilitation, self-connect, intrinsic enjoyment, time-filler, utilitarian and monetary evaluation experiences. Further, the study established significant role of customer engagement in predicting customer loyalty in addition to existing constructs of satisfaction and convenience. This study contributes to evolving scholarly research on customer engagement. This study further provides a framework to retailers for devising matrices to track experiences and engagement of customers on mobile devices for shopping. Further, retailers may be able to use customer engagement to differentiate themselves from competition in attracting merchants and advertisers.     

INTERNET网上零售中顾客忠诚的构筑——关注价值感知、满意体验和信任的关系及相对影响力

基于先行研究文献,本文开发了一个构筑Internet网上顾客忠诚的概念化模型,界定了价值感知、满意体验和信任作为影响顾客忠诚的主要前提心理变量,并对该模型及各变量间的动态因果关系进行了实验性验证。结果显示,本文提出的概念化模型和绝大部分研究假设获得了实证研究的支持。这些研究结果在理论上有助于深化对网上顾客忠诚构筑的认识,在营销实践中对网络零售商开发和实施网上顾客忠诚战略具有启示意义。     

Relationship Commitment and Ethical Consumer Behavior in a Retail Setting: The Case of Receiving Too Much Change at the Checkout

In this study, we conducted two experiments to examine the effect of relationship commitment on the reaction of shoppers to receiving too much change, controlling for the amount of excess change. Hypotheses based on equity theory, opportunism and guilt were set up and tested. The first study showed that, when the less committed consumer is confronted with a large excess of change, he/she is less likely to report this mistake, compared with a small excess. Conversely, consumers with a high commitment towards the retailer are more likely to tell when they receive too much change, especially when the amount is large. The second experiment provided an explanation for these findings: the less committed consumer is driven by opportunism, whereas guilt-related feelings play an important role in a high commitment relationship. These results have several implications for both retail management and future research.     

关系营销中基于承诺与信任的客户回报计划的机制研究

客户回报计划已成为一种重要的关系营销手段,但却没有太多研究着眼于回报计划的运作机制。本文研究了回报计划感知价值与承诺和信任的关系以及感知价值通过承诺与信任对客户忠诚的影响,并建立了回报计划运作机制研究模型,之后通过实验设计获取数据验证了此模型。研究结果为营销研究和客户回报计划实践提供了理论指导。     

Relationship Marketing and Consumers: A Social Dilemmas Approach

In this article a Social Dilemmas approach is taken toward relationship marketing, and consumer and seller behavior. This approach offers several advantages. It explicitly takes into account the dilemma that results from the differences in interests between consumers and sellers, as well as their interdependency and tendency toward opportunistic behavior. It focuses simultaneously on the two parties in dynamic interaction. It therefore provides a more generic and encompassing perspective than the common consumer behavior perspective, or the one-sided emphasis in marketing on seller activities. In contrast to a non-marketing (or selling) orientation of sellers, both transaction and relationship marketing seek a cooperative win-win solution to the consumer-seller dilemma. This requiresboth parties to compromise and cooperate and refrain from non-cooperation. Cooperative and non-cooperative consumer and seller behaviors are described. In addition, the SD-approach suggests some factors that influence interactions, transactions and relationships between consumers and sellers and may stimulate cooperation in real-life commercial dilemma situations. Some implications for marketing and consumer behavior theory and research, and marketing practice are discussed.     

营销渠道中的人际关系与跨组织合作关系:概念与模型

关于营销渠道中的跨组织管理行为和中国的关系,各自已有相当数量的学术论文发表。也有人将二者结合起来,探讨人际关系对中国企业进行渠道跨组织合作与管理的影响。然而,由于关系这一概念有丰富的内涵,大家的认识不统一,所以造成了相关的研究存在概念不清、测量工具混乱、讨论难以深入的问题。为了弥补这一缺陷,文章首先讨论了关系这一概念的基本内涵,然后将营销渠道中企业间的人际关系与跨组织合作关系相结合,提出一个理论模型,作为今后在理论上对相关问题进行进一步探讨的基础。     

Drivers of Customers’ Adoption and Adoption Timing of a New Loyalty Card in the Grocery Retail Market

The authors study consumers’ process of adoption of a new loyalty card in a grocery retail context. More specifically, the authors simultaneously investigate the impact of attitudinal, behavioral, and socio-demographic variables on the likelihood of adoption and the time to adoption. They show that these variables differently affect the adoption likelihood and timing and demonstrate the importance of attitudinal measures of customer loyalty such as commitment to the store. This research confirms the so-called self-selection bias and extends it to the attitudinal dimension of loyalty. Some guidelines are proposed to increase the effectiveness of loyalty card program launches.     

A Foot in the Door: Relationship Marketing Efforts Towards Transaction-Oriented Customers

Despite the growing awareness and use of relationship marketing principles, there are still limitations to the range of exchange situations to which relationship marketing is applicable. Customers may resist suppliers' attempts to become intimate. This contribution deals with how suppliers seek to overcome customer unwillingness, through an investigative case study. Seven propositions are developed on the marketing relationship policies followed by suppliers seeking to initiate, maintain and terminate relations with transaction-oriented customers.