The adaptive consequences of pride in personal selling

This study examines the adaptive consequences of pride in personal selling and its self-regulation with colleagues and customers. Study 1 investigates the effects of experiencing pride, where two benefits were found. First, pride increases salespersons’ performance-related motivations. Specifically, it promotes the use of adaptive selling strategies, greater effort, and self-efficacy. Second, pride positively affects organizational citizenship behaviors. Study 2 takes an emotion-process point of view and compares excessive pride (hubris) with positive pride. The results show that salespeople are capable of self-regulating the expression of these emotions differently toward colleagues and customers via anticipated feelings of fear, shame, and regret. Salespeople, in other words, are affected by their emotions, but they also are capable of controlling them to their advantage. Willem Verbeke (verbeke@few.eur.nl) is a chaired professor of sales and account management at Erasmus University in Rotterdam, the Netherlands. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania. His research has appeared in a number of academic journals, including theJournal of Marketing, theInternational Journal of Research in Marketing, theJournal of Management, theJournal of Organizational Behavior, and theJournal of Applied Psychology. His area of research interests includes personal selling, sales management, emotions and emotion regulation, social capital, and knowledge management. Frank Belschak (belschak@few.eur.nl) is an assistant professor of marketing and organizational behavior at Erasmus University in Rotterdam, the Netherlands. He received his Ph.D. in organizational behavior from the University of Cologne in Germany. His current research interests include emotions and emotion regulation in organizations and across cultures, as well as social capital and networks. Richard P. Bagozzi (bagozzi@rice.edu) is the J. Hugh Liedtke Professor of Management in the Jesse H. Jones Graduate School of Management and a professor of psychology at Rice University in Houston, Texas. He conducts research on human emotions, the theory of action, goal setting and goal striving, and structural equation methods.     

Investigating industry context effects in consumer-firm relationships: Preliminary results from a dispositional approach

Few, if any, past studies have attempted to develop a model to capture and explain industry context variability and hypothesize its effects on consumer-firm relationships. Generally, industry effects are ignored, described, or explained post hoc. Using the notion of consumers' dispositions toward a market, a framework is proposed for understanding the influence of industry context on consumer satisfaction, trust, value, and loyalty in relational exchanges. The empirical results of a survey in two service industries show that industry contexts matter and yield significant direct and moderating effects on consumer-firm relationships. The study underscores the promise of a dispositional approach for providing insights for the theory and practice of relationship marketing, resolvin goutstanding questions, and proposing fruitful areas for further examination. Edwin Nijssen, Ph.D., is a professor of marketing at the Nijmegen School of Management at the University of Nijmegen, the Netherlands. His research interest focuses on strategic and international marketing issues, relationship marketing, brand management, and new-product development. He has published inLong Range Planning, theJournal of Product Innovation Management, Technology Forecasting and Social Change, R&D Management, Industrial Marketing Management, and theJournal of International Marketing and has written several books on marketing strategy. Jagdip Singh, Ph.D., is a professor of marketing at the Weatherhead School of Management at Case Western Reserve University. His primary areas of research include consumer dissatisfaction and trust, measurement issues—including relationships between theoretical concepts and empirical observations— and the effectiveness of boundary role personnel. He has published in theJournal of Marketing, theAcademy of Management Journal, theJournal of the Academy of Marketing Science, Behavioral Research in Accounting, andManagement Science, among others. Deepak Sirdeshmukh, Ph.D., is a visiting assistant professor of marketing at the Weatherhead School of Management at Case Western Reserve University. His primary areas of research include consumer trust and consumer processing of brand information. He has published in theJournal of Marketing, theJournal of Marketing Research, theJournal of Consumer Research, theJournal of the Academy of Marketing Science, and theJournal of Consumer Psychology, among others. Hartmut H. Holzmüeller, Ph.D., is a professor of marketing at the School of Business at Dortmund University, Germany. His research interests include cross-national consumer research and customer relationship marketing. Most of his work has been published in German. His articles also appeared in theJournal of International Marketing, Management International Review, andInternational Business Review.     

Market-based capabilities and financial performance of firms: insights into marketing’s contribution to firm value

While there is recognition that market-based capabilities contribute to a firm’s financial performance, the exposition is largely conceptual (Srivastava et al. Journal of Marketing 62:2–18, 1998; Journal of Marketing 63:168–179, 1999). Using a resource based view of the firm, the present study proposes that (1) market-based assets and capabilities of a firm impacts (2) performance in three market-facing business processes (new product development, supply-chain and customer management), which in turn, influence (3) the firm’s financial performance. It develops related hypotheses and tests the framework empirically. The study also examines for the first time the interrelationship among the three business processes and their impact on the market value of firms. Further, the study examines the moderating influence of two organizational variables—size and age of the firm. Overall, the major contribution of the study is that it offers a process linkage between capabilities, process performance and financial performance. The results of this research will provide strategic insights to managers on optimal customer management, product development and supply chain strategies.

Managerial,organizational, and external drivers of sales effectiveness in export market ventures

The authors extend sales management theory by considering the role of export sales management in small- and medium-sized firms, and they develop an integrated model of export sales organization effectiveness. Specifically, the authors test 16 hypotheses that examine the relationships among export sales management control, export territory, psychic distance, export sales performance, and export sales organization effectiveness. Using a mail-survey approach, data were collected from U.K.-based export sales managers in 146 direct exporters of industrial products. Though certain anomalies are observed, the research findings support many of the hypothesized associations, confirming the robustness of existing sales management concepts and theories in an export-marketing context.

On the importance of matching strategic behavior and target market selection to business strategy in high-tech markets

Business strategy is fundamentally concerned with the actions required to create superior customer value in the firm’s target markets with the ultimate goal of achieving superior performance. Marketing theory suggests that two critical marketing activities required to achieve this end are: (1) the adoption of appropriate strategic behaviors (i.e., customer-oriented, competitor-oriented, technology-oriented) and (2) targeting of the appropriate market segments (i.e., innovators, early adopters, early majority, late majority, laggards). This study builds on prior research which demonstrates that the strategic behavior—firm performance relationship is contingent on the firm’s strategy by examining this relationship in high tech markets and by considering the incremental contribution of appropriate target market selection. Responses from 160 senior marketing managers in high-tech firms reveal strong support for our framework. Thus, this study provides useful guidance to executives and managers in high-tech firms regarding the steps that they should take to increase their probability of success.

The service-dominant logic and a hierarchy of operant resources: developing masterful operant resources and implications for marketing strategy

Marketing’s evolution toward a new dominant logic requires the focus of marketing to be on the intangible, dynamic, operant resources that are at the heart of competitive advantage and performance. First, building on resource-advantage theory’s notion of basic resources and higher-order resources, this article proposes a hierarchy of basic, composite, and interconnected operant resources. Second, reviewing research on business strategy and marketing strategy, several resources that correspond to the proposed hierarchy are identified and discussed. Third, the notion of developing masterful operant resources is introduced. Fourth, based on the proposed hierarchy and the notion of masterful operant resources, some exemplars of potential research avenues for marketing strategy are provided. Finally, the article concludes with the discussion of implications for marketing practitioners, researchers, and educators. In sum, this article extends and elaborates the concept of operant resources in the service-dominant logic of marketing.     

Effects of offline ad content on online brand search: insights from super bowl advertising

Individuals watch TV shows while simultaneously and/or immediately searching online. Thus, the content of offline TV ads can affect online brand search, a key predictor of sales. Yet there are few insights on the effect of offline ad content on online brand search. We develop hypotheses relating the informational and emotional content of TV ads on online brand search, independently, and in conjunction with two attentional content elements of the ad campaign, prior media publicity and brand website prominence in the TV ad. We test the hypotheses using a quasi-experimental study, the telecast of TV ads on the annual Super Bowl event between 2004 and 2012 (n = 293 observations). We measure online brand search by online brand search lift, i.e., the growth in online brand search following the telecast of the brand’s ad on Super Bowl. The findings indicate that the informational content of the TV ad increases online brand search, while both attentional content elements decrease this effect. We find no support for the effect of emotional content of the TV ad on online brand search. Our findings extend marketing theory on online search and generate managerial implications for designing TV ads to increase online brand search.