Putting market-facing technology to work: Organizational drivers of CRM performance

A large proportion of firms that adopt customer relationship management (CRM) technology find it challenging to integrate CRM technology into their core marketing processes and utilize CRM strategically to appreciably improve their performance. The authors conceptualize a model to understand the drivers of superior CRM performance after CRM technology has been adopted by a firm and examine strategic utilization of CRM technology as driven by user acceptance and proficiency in the form of employee buy-in and expertise. Top management championship practices, employee information technology (IT) skills, and CRM knowledge are identified and examined as key building blocks toward strategic utilization. The empirical test of the conceptual model is based on a mail survey of North American firms that have adopted information technology-based CRM systems. The results, based on random effects model, show that strategic utilization of CRM technology leads to higher performance when there is an emphasis on using it to manage business-to-business rather than business-to-consumer relationships, user expertise (but not buy-in) impacts CRM performance through strategic utilization, and top management championship practices, CRM knowledge, and employee IT skills impact strategic utilization through buy-in and expertise.     

Material Sustainability Information and Stock Price Informativeness

Journal of Business Ethics - As part of the Securities and Exchange Commission’s revision of Regulation S–K, which lays out reporting requirements for publicly-listed companies, many...     

Meta-analysis: integrating accumulated knowledge

Building a foundation of marketing theory requires developing effective ways to aggregate research results. Meta-analyses that accumulate knowledge within a research domain is an important means for summarizing research findings and increasingly is being conducted in various substantive marketing domains. Moderator analysis and structural models using meta-analytic inputs have emerged as a powerful means to advance current knowledge in a research domain, and, importantly, identify fruitful areas for future inquiry. This article reviews the growth of meta-analysis in marketing and identifies several important issues researchers must consider when conducting and reporting a meta-analysis.     

Understanding the long-term implications of retailer returns in business-to-business relationships

Providing end consumers with the ability to return products is an important part of a retailer’s service offering. While research in reverse logistics has explored the movement of returned merchandise upstream, little research examines the relational implications of returned merchandise in the business-to-business (B2B) context. This research explores the relational implications, as well as the impact on the supplier salesperson’s behaviors, of retailer returns. Using a comprehensive dataset which includes longitudinal archival returns data, as well as two waves of retailer surveys reporting on salesperson behaviors, our research investigates how retail returns impact salesperson responses in the following time period, retailer perceptions of the relationship in the following time period, and returns in the following time period. Consistent with a reciprocal exchange perspective, results suggest that when salespeople respond to returns by engaging in relationship building behaviors, these behaviors are noted by the retailer, which in turn results in fewer returns in a future time period.     

The emotional review–reward effect: how do reviews increase impulsivity?

A growing reliance on customer reviews prompts firms to develop strategies to encourage customers to post online reviews of their products. However, little research investigates the behavioral consequences of writing a review. The act of sharing personal opinions through reviews is a rewarding experience and makes customers feel socially connected. With an application of reverse alliesthesia theory, the current study predicts that such rewarding experiences drive online reviewers to seek other rewards, such as impulsive buying. Three lab-based and two field studies demonstrate such an emotional review–reward effect: sharing emotional information in the public realm of customer reviews, rather than forming similar opinions privately, drives participants to make more impulsive buying decisions.     

The Accuracy of Scanned Prices

Nearly all retailers use price scanning systems to process transactions quickly, and presumably, accurately. Inaccuracies in scanned prices have important implications for retailers in that undercharges may impact retail profitability while overcharges could result in negative consumer perceptions of retailers and continued legal action. Here, we investigate the overall State of accuracy of scanned prices and develop certain empirical generalizations. To do so, we begin with a review of what is known regarding the accuracy of scanned prices and conduct a reanalysis of FTC data and compare the results with those from more recent cross-sectional data from the State of Washington. We then conduct a thorough analysis of a large longitudinal price scanner data set, with 231,760 products screened over a 15-year period. We investigate accuracy across different retailer characteristics, merchandise locations, and promotional activities. Implications of these results for retailers are discussed.     

Hybrid strategic groups

The notion of strategic groups has recently emerged as a critical perspective for uncovering firms' strategic postures/recipes and competitive market structures. Firms within strategic groups generally adopt similar strategic recipes and compete more intensely than firms across strategic groups. Building on recent research, the authors develop the concept of hybrid strategic groups, which blend the strategic recipes of more than one group, in contrast to existing conceptualizations of strategic groups, where either firms tightly follow the recipes of a strategic group (i.e., core firms) or firms loosely follow the recipes of a strategic group (i.e., secondary firms). Thus, competition among firms depends not only on the strategic group but also on the overlap of that strategic group with other strategic groups. The authors devise a combinatorial optimization-based classification procedure utilizing a bilinear model that accommodates multiple variable batteries that can estimate hybrid strategic groups. The proposed methodology is illustrated by using archival data on public banks. For this illustration, the hybrid strategic group solution outperforms ordinary cluster analyses and offers critical insights into the nature of competition among firms. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Emerging trends in retail pricing practice: implications for research

This article represents the first of several editorials to appear in the Journal of Retailing designed to examine the nexus between retail practice and research, with the goal of stimulating further research. This essay on emerging trends in pricing discusses recent advances in retail pricing optimization. We begin with a review of how retailers typically make pricing decisions using time-honored heuristics and attempt to infer the optimal decisions. However, current methods are suboptimal because they do not consider the affects of advertising, competition, substitute products, or complementary products on sales. Most fail to take into account how price elasticity changes over time, particularly for fashion merchandise, or how market segments react differentially to price changes. In addition, many retailers find it difficult to know how to price merchandise when their suppliers offer temporary “deals.” They are also generally unaware of how their pricing strategy influences their overall image. As these issues demonstrate, optimal pricing is not a static problem. Retailers must be able to react quickly to changes in the environment or sales patterns. This paper also provides examples of the more sophisticated pricing techniques that are currently being tested in practice. Finally, we conclude with a discussion of the critical components that must be incorporated into retail pricing.