Selling and sales management: An introduction to the special section and recommendations on advancing the sales research agenda

Effectively managing the sales function is a prerequisite for success in business markets. Thus, practitioners are increasingly interested in improving the performance of their sales function. However, there is evidence pinpointing that academic research in the area may be experiencing a decline in its status among other subject areas in the marketing discipline. Fortunately, advances in the field of selling and sales management as reflected in the organization of specialized conferences/meetings and the development of special journal issues hold the promise of enhancing the status of sales within marketing academia. Following this stream of activities, this IMM special section on “Selling & Sales Management” aims at stimulating the level of discourse regarding how research in our field can be advanced. The present article introduces the special section; next, it summarizes the articles comprising the special section; and, finally, it concludes with some thoughts on fruitful research opportunities in the sales area.     

Visitor perceptions of crime-safety and attitudes towards risk: The case of Table Mountain National Park,Cape Town

This paper investigates tourist perceptions of crime-safety and attitudes towards risk whilst visiting Table Mountain National Park (TMNP) in Cape Town in June and July 2008. The study examined survey data of 303 domestic and international tourists during their visit to TMNP. A linear regression analysis revealed that although visitors had concerns about their personal safety they are still likely to return to TMNP and recommend it to other people. In addition, visitor attitudes towards risk did not influence perceptions of crime-safety and its effect on their intentions to revisit or recommend TMNP. The results also show that respondent's individual characteristics such as age, nationality, and purpose of visit influenced their perceptions of crime-safety. Perceptions that TMNP is unsafe tended to increase with respondent's age. Respondents on holiday were more likely to perceive TMNP as safer than those on business or visiting friends and relatives. The study's findings add to the literature by offering more insight on tourist perceptions of crime-safety and attitudes towards risk and their impact on tourist behaviour. Various tourist-crime prevention measures to enhance visitor safety at national parks are also recommended to the tourism industry and law enforcement agencies.     

Key problems facing industrial distributors

This article reports on a survey of the problems faced by industrial distributors. Five major problem categories are identified and managerial implications are derived from the findings.     

Technologically evolving industrial equipment fabricators: their foreign involvement

In the United States fabrication shops build equipment to client specifications. Once their growth and profitability were closely aligned with those of their clients who were generally the larger firms. Now that most of these clients import their needs from abroad, fabrication shops need to compete on their own in both domestic and foreign markets. In order to help them achieve their goal, we need to have some understanding of their internal development and further identify possible barriers to their foreign involvement. To this end, a conceptual model with several operational and planning variables, to discriminate fabrication shops that service foreign markets from those that do not, is postulated and empirically tested. Policy implications of the study findings are discussed briefly. Limitations of the statistical procedures and possible future work are outlined.