Building and Maintaining Effective Buyer-Seller Relationships

Abstract

O'Grady and Lane (1996) have observed that Americans and Canadians have difficulty establishing the rapport for effective buyer-seller relationships, and that Canadians are especially disadvantaged. This article explored the marketing activities that American and Canadian managers preferred to establish these relationships. Differences were found in both relationship marketing and marketing mix factors. The Americans were significantly more committed to relational activities, building relationships based on respect, shared goals, personal trust and making sure everyone received the expected benefits. The Canadians focused more on pricing, and helping out when asked or needed. To do lists are offered for making each more effective with the other.     

A Comparison of Residents' Perceptions in Two Cruise Ports in the Mediterranean Sea

This paper examines residents' perceptions of a wide set of externalities exerted by the development of cruise tourism. The research involved data collection in two ports located in the two largest Mediterranean islands, Sicily and Sardinia, during the summer peak of the cruise season 2011. These two cruise destinations are especially interesting as they are characterized by a distinct life cycle. The empirical findings show that the two groups of residents have statistically equal perceptions on cruise activity in their destination. A correspondence analysis shows that residents have an overall positive attitude on the development of cruise tourism with respect to social, cultural and economic impacts. Nevertheless, they also feel that cruise activity has a negative impact, especially on the environment. Heterogeneity in occupation is explicitly taken into account. These findings provide directions for local policy‐makers. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Considering Tobler's first law of geography in a tourism context

Despite potential benefits from applying Tobler's law in a tourism context, the law has been used sparingly within the tourism literature. This study seeks to expand the use of Tobler's law in tourism research by examining the relationship between tourists' distance travelled to a destination and the perceived degree of emotional closeness such visitors have with community residents. In doing so, visitor data from three uniquely distinct Texas destinations were analyzed. Results suggest that visitors to the destinations not only differed in their average travel distances, but also the perceived levels of emotional solidarity with residents. Results supported Tobler's law in a tourism context, whereby results indicated that the further an individual travelled to a destination, the less they agreed with feeling close to destination residents. Implications and future research direction opportunities are offered at the close of the work.     

Canonical forms and tests of hypotheses Part II: Multivariate mixed linear models

Abstract  In the literature on multivariate analysis of variance, exact test procedures are restricted to linear models with fixed effects only. In this paper tests are presented for multivarite linear hypotheses with respect to mixed models, which constitude a generalization of (univariate) regular models described by R oebruck (1982). Furthermore it is shown, that the matrices, which are used to compute the test statistics, can be derived from the univariate "sums of squares" in the same manner as in the case of fixed models. The applicability of this theory is demonstrated by two examples.     

The Ethical Judgment of Private Club Senior Executives

ABSTRACT

The purpose of this study is to investigate effects of working experience and organization size on ethical judgments on ethical issues among senior private club executives. Senior club executives at small and large private clubs were given five vignettes, representing ethical dilemmas in five categories of ethical behavior identified by previous researchers. They were asked to determine whether each issue was a question of ethics or not (N = 413). The multivariate analysis of variance results indicate that senior executives working in the large-sized club with more than 20 years’ hospitality working experience tend to make higher ethical judgments on ethical issues.     

Grocery retail loyalty program effects: self-selection or purchase behavior change?

In the retail sector, consumers typically patronize multiple outlets for a variety of products, which raises the important issue of how outlets can gain a greater share of consumer expenditures. One such way is to increase repeat purchases through loyalty programs. This article examines the impact of loyalty programs, which target existing customers, on repurchase behavior in grocery stores. It finds that heavier, more frequent customers of a store enroll in the loyalty program earlier; that buying behavior changes only slightly after buyers join the program; and that small changes in loyalty appear to erode 6–9 months after buyers join.     

Scientific method and retailing research: A retrospective

In this paper, we review the 164 articles published in the Journal of Retailing over the 2002-2007 time-span, the period reviewed by Grewal and Levy in their recent article entitled “Retailing Research: Past, Present and Future” [Grewal, Dhruv and Michael Levy (2007), “Passing the Baton, Journal of Retailing 2001 to 2007,” Journal of Retailing, 83 (4) (in this issue)] for their content. Two study characteristics are reviewed for each publication: (1) approach adopted for methodology (classified into eight categories of Student Surveys, Consumer Surveys, Secondary Data, Laboratory Studies, Industry Surveys, Qualitative Methods, modeling, and other) and (2) inferential tools employed by the scholars. The latter are sub-grouped into six categories of regression, ANOVA/MANOVA, structural equation modeling (SEM), analytical modeling, qualitative analysis, and other. Patterns of the usage of these approaches and techniques are tracked over the years and across content areas. We find that researchers in a particular Substantive Content Area tend to focus on particular methodological approaches and inferential tools. We argue that much is to be gained by shaking up these historical patterns.