The ultimately accountable job: leading today's sales organization

In recent years, sales leaders have had to devote considerable time and energy to establishing and maintaining disciplined processes. The thing is, many of them stop there--and they can't afford to, because the business environment has changed. Customers have gained power and gone global, channels have proliferated, more product companies are selling services, and many suppliers have begun providing a single point of contact for customers. Such changes require today's sales leaders to fill various new roles: Company leader. The best sales chiefs actively help formulate and execute company strategy, and they collaborate with all functions of the business to deliver value to customers. Customer champion. Customers want C-level relationships with suppliers in order to understand product strategy, look at offerings in advance, and participate in decisions made about future products--and sales leaders are in the best position to offer that kind of contact. Process guru. Although sales chiefs must look beyond the sales and customer processes they have honed over the past decade, they can't abandon them. The focus on process has become only more important as many organizations have begun bundling products and services to meet important customers' individual needs. Organization architect. Good sales leaders spend a lot of time evaluating and occasionally redesigning the sales organization's structure to ensure that it supports corporate strategy. Often, this involves finding the right balance between specialized and generalized sales roles. Course corrector. Sales leaders must watch the horizon, but they can't take their hands off the levers or forget about the dials. If they do, they might fail to respond when quick adjustments in priorities are needed.     

Relative Presence of Business-to-Business Research in the Marketing Literature

Relative to its contribution to the U.S. and other developed countries economies, industrial and business-to-business marketing have been underrepresented in the marketing literature. To determine the extent of this underrepresentation, the authors have evaluated thirty-one marketing journals beginning with the initial publication of the Journal of Marketing in 1936. Without the introduction of journals whose specific focus is industrial marketing, the underrepresentation would have been even more severe than it is currently. Six general research areas were also looked at to determine what trends in industrial marketing research have existed. These areas are: buyer behavior, sales management, marketing relationships, innovation and new product development, marketing strategy, and channels of distribution.     

A Model Integrating the Multidimensional Developmental Theory of Privacy and Theory of Planned Behavior to Examine Fabrication of Information Online

We investigate the antecedents behind online consumers' attempt to disguise their identities through fabrication. We first develop a general conceptual model that draws on two extant theoretical frameworks: (1) Laufer and Wolfe's Multidimensional Approach to Privacy, and (2) Ajzen's Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) with Perceived Moral Obligation. Next we conduct an empirical study using SEM to test the portion of the conceptual model based on the TPB framework. Results demonstrate that Attitudes, Perceived Behavioral Control, and Perceived Moral Obligation are significant drivers of fabrication, while Subjective Norms are not. Anonymity, one of the unique characteristics of the Internet compared to in-store environments, likely contributed to the intention to fabricate information. In the concluding section we discuss the implications of our empirical results, industry self-regulation and public policy considerations, and how future research can draw upon the conceptual Laufer and Wolfe framework, particularly the calculus of behavior construct, to further enrich our understanding of fabrication behavior on the Internet.     

Generalized least squares and maximum likelihood estimation of the logistic function for technology diffusion

Given a simple stochastic model of technology adoption, we derive a function for technological diffusion that is logistic in the deterministic part and has an error term based on the binomial distribution. We derive two estimators—a generalized least squares (GLS) estimator and a maximum likelihood (ML) estimator—which should be more efficient than the ordinary least squares (OLS) estimators typically used to estimate technological diffusion functions. We compare the two new estimators with OLS using Monte-Carlo techniques and find that under perfect specification, GLS and ML are equally efficient and both are more efficient than OLS. There was no evidence of bias in any of the estimators. We used the estimators on some example data and found evidence suggesting that under conditions of misspecification, the estimated variance-covariance of the ML estimator is badly biased. We verified the existence of the bias with a second Monte-Carlo experiment performed with a known misspecification. In the second experiment, GLS was the most efficient estimator, followed by ML, and OLS was least efficient. We conclude that the GLS estimator of choice.     

Financial innovation, values and volatilities when markets are incomplete

The traditional pricing methodology in finance values derivative securities as redundant assets that have no impact on equilibrium prices and allocations. This paper considers a model with incomplete markets in which the valuation of derivative securities cannot be treated independently from the valuation of the primary securities. The model constitutes a framework for the analysis of the consequences of financial innovation (creation of new contracts or modification of existing contracts). We provide a numerical counterexample to the popular belief that financial innovations that increase the volatilities of traded securities are bad. In this example the introduction of an option increases the volatility of the rate of return on the underlying stock, yet the creation of this asset is unanimously supported by investors.I am grateful to H. Polemarchakis and to an anonymous referee for insightful suggestions.     

Hospitality service employees’ coping styles: The role of emotional intelligence,two basic personality traits,and socio-demographic factors

This study examines the relationship between emotional intelligence (EI) and three coping strategies (task-, emotion-, and avoidance-oriented coping) using an adult, hospitality industry population specifically in hotel and restaurant work environments. The hierarchical regression indicates that EI is by far the most dominant predictor of task coping among all selected explanatory variables; EI does not have much influence on emotion coping after the entry of two basic personality traits (neuroticism and extraversion); and EI is significantly related to avoidance coping encompassing distraction and social diversion. In addition, this study reveals the role played by age and work experience in individual coping efforts and a high possibility of female workers as a task-oriented coper in hospitality work settings.     

Exotic or erotic – contrasting images for defining destinations

Sex and sexuality are powerful human emotions that have been exploited by the tourism industry to develop aspects of destination image. Where destinations have sought to exploit sex by use of the erotic as an appealing image, sex becomes a featured selling point and may inadvertently become more important than other elements of the destination's preferred image as a result of image capture where the preferred image is displaced by a less preferred image. This paper examines the potential for image confusion when the erotic is used alongside the exotic as part of destination image. In particular, Thailand's preferred image as an exotic destination and the nation's unofficial image as a location for erotic activities are considered. Marketing implications are examined, as are potential measures that may be implemented to soften or even eliminate potentially negative impacts that are presently associated with Thailand's reputation as a center for sex tourism.     

Benefiting from dedication and constraint in buyer-seller relationships

This paper contributes to recent calls for studying the effectiveness of relationship-based marketing practices [De Wulf, Odekerken-Schröder, & Iacobucci, 2001; Palmatier, Robert W., Dant, Rajiv P., Grewal, Dhruv, Evans, K.R. (2006), Factors influencing the effectiveness of relationship marketing: A meta-analysis, Journal of Marketing, Vol. 70, October, 142-143.] by identifying the influence of relationship investments, personnel competencies, frequency and quality of communication on some selected B2B relationship outcomes. The paper also sheds light on the discussion of the role of contextual factors on relationship development by incorporating the construct of quality of supply alternatives into the hypothesized structural model and empirically testing this model in the context of the transforming Polish economy. The results of research conducted among business customers are used to verify the model using SEM techniques.According to a prior conceptualization [Bendapudi, Neeli, Berry, Leonard L. (1997), “Customers' Motivations for Maintaining Relationships With Service Providers,” Journal of Retailing, Vol. 73[1], 15-37.] research suggests that companies operating in B2B markets may benefit from both dedication-based and constraint-based relationships, but the first type of relationships brings more positive outcomes. The widest set of relationship benefits may be achieved by improving the emotional tone of the relationship which is connected mostly with developing competencies of personnel and a high quality of inter-firm communication. Other analyzed marketing practices should be carefully used because they may not lead to expected results. The research results are discussed with regard to prior studies in the area. Some managerial implications, study limitations and suggestions for further research are presented.     

Trade openness reduces growth volatility when countries are well diversified

This paper addresses the mechanisms by which trade openness affects growth volatility. Using a diverse set of export concentration measures, we present strong evidence pointing to an important role for export diversification in conditioning the effect of trade openness on growth volatility. Indeed, the effect of openness on volatility is shown to be negative for a significant proportion of countries with relatively diversified export baskets.