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This study investigates how customer requests, a common phenomenon, influence frontline employee (FLE) job outcomes. We propose and demonstrate that (1) FLEs possess tendencies to appraise customer requests in both positive (i.e., challenge appraisal tendency) and negative (i.e., hindrance appraisal tendency) ways, (2) higher levels of challenge appraisal tendency result in higher levels of FLE performance and lower levels of turnover (mediated through job engagement), (3) higher levels of hindrance appraisal tendency lead to increased FLE turnover (mediated through job stress), (4) the effects of FLE appraisal tendencies on situational engagement and stress are magnified when a specific customer request is deemed to be more (rather than less) demanding, and (5) customer request appraisal tendencies are shaped by the interaction between FLEs’ level of prosocial motivation and intrinsic motivation. These results are very encouraging for managers as they imply that FLE responses to customer requests are not determined by the nature of the requests themselves (which is beyond their control) but, rather, they are a function of how FLEs construe customer requests, a process that can be influenced through organizational human resource practices.

Research and practice alike suggest that checkout charity campaigns are a win–win–win for retailers, customers, and causes. The current investigation offers a complementary perspective on the effects of checkout charity by uncovering evidence of undesirable customer responses triggered by such solicitations. Specifically, across four studies, we find that checkout charity solicitations induce customer anxiety, which in turn reduces their evaluation of the service encounter. In addition, our results reveal that such anxiety decreases during solicitation episodes when customers agree to donate; however, this occurs only when requests are made by frontline employees rather than self-checkout technologies. These results caution managers that checkout charity solicitations may have unintended consequences on customers that result in negative encounter outcomes, particularly in service environments in which the solicitation is technology-mediated.

Customer-oriented frontline employees are motivated by a strong desire to help customers. While such motivation enhances customer outcomes, it can also encourage frontline employees to engage in customer-directed prosocial behaviors that undermine organizational norms. We consider such a possibility and find that: (1) in their quest to satisfy customers’ needs, customer-oriented employees engage in customer-focused voice and/or pro-customer rule breaking, (2) the extent to which employees perform these behaviors depends on whether they identify with the organization or customers, (3) customer-focused voice enhances while pro-customer rule breaking hinders role performance, (4) the net performance consequences of a customer orientation can be positive or negative, and (5) various contingency factors determine whether rule breaking results in lower performance ratings from supervisors. These findings offer evidence of a customer orientation dark side and, paradoxically, underscore that internally focused marketing efforts are critical for a customer orientation to enhance frontline employee performance.

The authors propose that the emotional intelligence–sales performance link can be better understood by considering a salesperson’s confidence in how they use emotions, known as emotional self-efficacy (ESE). Four multisource studies across diverse sales industries offer evidence of the interactive effect of a salesperson’s emotional intelligence and ESE—which the authors term “emotional calibration”—on salesperson performance. They find that sales performance suffers when salespeople are either overconfident or underconfident in their emotional skills and that salespeople perform best when they are calibrated. Further, the authors demonstrate that the performance gains associated with emotional calibration (1) are attenuated when salespeople are under stress and (2) occur because emotional calibration encourages positive avoidance emotions (calmness and relaxation) among salespeople that result in improved customer rapport, but only among salespeople with relatively longer job tenures. Overall, the research highlights the critical role of ESE as an essential but neglected aspect of a salesperson’s emotional competence.

Prior research finds that the more attached salespeople are to a brand they sell, the more effort they extend on behalf of the brand, thus improving sales performance. However, high salesperson bra...

Purpose This study aims to determine the extent to which the use of coordinating conjunctions enhances or impairs definitional clarity. Design/methodology/approach In two studies, a sample of 736 construct definitions from the Journal of Marketing, Journal of Marketing Research and Journal of Consumer Research over a 30-year period was judged for ambiguity and vagueness by both academic and lay judges. Findings The authors demonstrate that constructing definitions using both “and” and “or” increases the ambiguity and vagueness of the construct’s meaning. The most frequently used conjunction is “and” which appeared in 42 per cent of the definitions. A significant percentage (26 per cent) contain the conjunction “or.” Research limitations/implications A framework for understanding alternative interpretations of “and” or “or” is developed. Five recommendations are proposed for evaluating the use of “and” and “or” in construct definitions. Theorists in all academic fields should not use both “and” and “or” in the same construct definition. Practical implications A five-step process is proposed for evaluating the use of “and” and “or” in construct definitions. Theorists should not use both “and” and “or” in the same construct definition. Originality/value This is the first exploration of how specific wording patterns used in construct definitions in academic research affect the clarity of the definition.

The last decade has witnessed a rapid growth in the number of individuals who sell products and services to their friends. Despite this fast growth, there is scant research on the phenomenon of sel...

Despite being the object of much interest, deep insights regarding why and when investments in big data resources enhance firm performance are lacking in the literature. Building on the resource-based view (RBV) and data provided by 301 senior marketing managers, this study reveals that big data resources primarily improve firm performance by enhancing the market-directed capabilities of the firm. In addition, the data indicate that firms pursuing a differentiation rather than cost-leadership strategy gain most from big data resource investments and that such resources account for 13 % of the variance in the performance of firms pursuing a differentiation strategy.

While the importance of persistence to sales success is seemingly unquestioned, anecdotal evidence suggests that the incremental business generated through salesperson persistence may be tempered by its accompanying costs (e.g., time spent pursuing noncommittal prospects). In light of this possibility, this research uses a grounded theory approach to explore the nature of salesperson persistence, its behavioral manifestations, and its impact on salesperson job performance. Consistent with social influence theory precepts, this study finds that (1) persistence manifests as a combination of influence tactics salespeople deploy to shape the responses of resistant prospects, and (2) the mix of persistence tactics salespeople employ can be nurture-focused (i.e., aimed at building the foundation for future exchange) and/or closure-focused (i.e., aimed at uncovering prospects' true intent), with each persistence approach having desirable and undesirable performance consequences. Additionally, the data reveal that political skill is an important boundary condition which determines the effectiveness of persistence attempts as it enables salespeople to identify tactics likely to be most effective in a given situation. The study's findings thus suggest that the effect of persistence on salesperson performance may not be universally positive, but rather depends on the type of tactics salespeople deploy as well as on their level of political skill.

Autonomy is commonly regarded as a desirable element of an employee's psychological climate that has the potential to reduce salesperson burnout. The literature is silent, however, regarding whethe...

While the literature recognizes that sales organizations evolve as they seek to improve their effectiveness, little is known about this evolutionary process. As a first step toward remedying this important knowledge gap, this case study uses event systems theory to explain the process through which critical events shaped the evolution of a sales organization over the course of a thirty-year period. The results reveal that (1) shifts in the sales organization were prompted by events that focused the unit's attention on the desire for growth or on the need to curb excesses, (2) the primary mechanism for effecting change in the sales organization was the flattening and de-flattening of organizational structures, and (3) a high degree of correspondence exists between shifts in organizational structure and, both, a salesperson's level of social capital and the incidence of unethical salesperson behaviors. The theoretical and practical implications of these findings are discussed.

Researchers have been thorough in their examination of the influence of organizational factors (e.g., supervisors, climate) on employees' perceptions of justice in the workplace. However, much less effort has been directed toward understanding how factors external to the organization – namely, customers – influence perceived justice. This represents an important omission because frontline employees are often held accountable for customer satisfaction which, ultimately, may depend on customers' initial treatment of frontline employees. The research reported herein explores this possibility by proposing that (1) customer interpersonal justice enhances employee-customer fit, (2) customer informational justice increases both employee-customer fit and self-efficacy, and (3) employee-customer fit and self-efficacy interact in prediction of frontline employee customer-oriented behaviors. The results affirm the proposed relationships and thus provide initial evidence that employee-customer fit and self-efficacy mediate the effects of perceived customer-justice on customer-oriented behaviors; the implications of these findings for theory and practice are discussed.

The literature establishes that customer and frontline employee (FLE) emotions converge during their encounters as a result of a transient, contagion-based process in which emotions flow from one actor to another. Recent evidence suggests, however, that this transient process does not produce emotional convergence among frontline dyads engaged in ongoing exchange, a surprising finding, given the wealth of evidence in support of the idea that customers and FLEs engaged in relational exchange strongly influence one another. In light of this evidence, we argue here that customers and FLEs engaged in ongoing exchange experience similar emotions not as a result of the transient transfer of emotions, but because they develop the tendency to undergo a similar emotional response to relationship events, a phenomenon we call the shared frontline experience. Informed by the social psychology literature, we support this idea by advancing a conceptual model that highlights the role of relationship closeness, personality similarity, and dyadic attachment style in producing the shared frontline experience. The proposed model also suggests that firms stand to benefit from the shared frontline experience of customers and FLEs if they provide the dyad with autonomy, a decision not without risk. Future research directions suggested by this perspective are discussed.

The literature identifies several stressors (e.g., role ambiguity, role conflict) that have a detrimental effect on salesperson well-being and performance. One such stressor—salesperson insecurity– has been largely neglected in the literature and is the focus of this research. Specifically, taking a combined phenomenology and grounded theory approach, this study provides insight into the multi-faceted nature of salesperson insecurity and the process through which it emerges. The findings reveal that salesperson insecurity is a potent work stressor that results when cognitive and affective responses to felt discomforts cannot be reconciled with past beliefs and experiences. Managerial implications are discussed.

Given the stressful nature of sales jobs, research has historically emphasized the importance of reducing exhaustion for promoting desired salesperson job outcomes. Building on data provided by 235 B2B salespeople, this study finds that while reducing exhaustion is important, enhancing engagement may be more critical. Specifically, the results reveal that engagement mediates the effects of customer orientation, training, and supervisor support on sales performance, but exhaustion does not. Furthermore, the results indicate that exhaustion and engagement both mediate the effects of supervisor support on turnover intentions. Implications of the study’s findings for theory and practice are discussed.

Due to its practical importance, the relationship between customer satisfaction and frontline employee (FLE) job satisfaction has received significant attention in the literature. Numerous studies to date confirm that the constructs are related and rely on this empirical finding to infer support for the "inside-out" effect of FLE job satisfaction on customer satisfaction. In doing so, prior studies ignore the possibility that-as suggested by the Service Profit Chain's satisfaction mirror-a portion of the observed empirical effect may be due to the "outside-in" impact of customer satisfaction on FLE job satisfaction. Consequently, both the magnitude and direction of the causal relationship between the constructs remain unclear. To address this oversight, this study builds on multisource data, including longitudinal satisfaction data provided by 49,242 customers and 1,470 FLEs from across 209 retail stores, to examine the association between FLE job satisfaction and customer satisfaction in a context where service relationships are the norm. Consistent with predictions rooted in social exchange theory, the results reveal that (a) customer satisfaction and FLE job satisfaction are reciprocally related; (b) the outside-in effect of customer satisfaction on FLE job satisfaction is predominant (i.e., larger in magnitude than the inside-out effect); and (c) customer engagement determines the extent of this outside-in predominance. Contrary to common wisdom, the study's findings suggest that, in relational contexts, incentivizing FLEs to satisfy customers may prove to be more effective for enhancing FLE and customer outcomes than direct investments in FLE job satisfaction. (PsycINFO Database Record

Customer prioritization strategies, which focus a firm's efforts on its most important customers, are expected to improve account profitability. Anecdotal evidence suggests, however, that such strategies may also undermine account profitability by inducing customers to become overly demanding. Building on social exchange theory, this research evaluates these competing perspectives across two field studies and finds that prioritization is best understood as a double-edged sword. Specifically, the results reveal that prioritization efforts initiate both a gratitude-driven process, which enhances sales and profit, and an entitlement-driven process, which increases service costs and reduces profit. Importantly, the findings indicate that prioritization tactics differ in the extent to which they trigger these competing processes and thus in their ability to influence account profitability. Finally, the results also reveal that critical moderators (competitive intensity and prioritization transparency) determine the extent to which the entitlement-driven process undermines the gratitude-driven process. For managers, the findings suggest that both the tactics employed and moderating conditions determine whether prioritization has a positive, negative, or negligible effect on prioritized accounts’ profitability.

Many researchers have emphasized the importance of communication in personal selling. Psychologists and researchers in management and advertising have recognized the importance of communication via stories, but this has not extended to research in sales. This paper uses a framework developed from exploratory field work and the literature on stories to investigate storytelling by retail salespeople in three similar experimental studies. The experiments manipulate personal versus business stories across three different topic areas: entity, product, and digression. The results suggest that product stories told from a business point of view may be most effective in enhancing consumers’ purchase intentions in onetime sales encounters.

Building on job demands-resources (JD-R) theory, a comprehensive model of the determinants of salesperson new product selling outcomes is proposed. Existing empirical support for the proposed model is then assessed through a detailed review of published empirical studies. The results of this comparative process reveal research is needed that (1) explores important causal linkages implied by JD-R theory that have not been considered in previous research (e.g., new product selling demands → burnout → outcomes); (2) proceeds from a more robust understanding of the factors relevant to new product selling situations, including an expanded array of selling demands (e.g., balancing of new and old products), selling resources (e.g., customer orientation), and selling outcomes (e.g., customer satisfaction); and (3) employs growth (e.g., new product burnout growth) and multisource (e.g., customer and salesperson perceptions) data to improve understanding of the determinants of new product selling outcomes. Aside fr...

Extant research is equivocal about the organizational performance effects of customer relationship management (CRM) technology use, with some studies reporting positive effects and other studies reporting no effects at all. The present research effort posits that these mixed findings may potentially be explained by two factors: (1) CRM technology use may have different effects on different customers, and (2) different CRM tools may have different performance consequences. This study investigates this possibility by building on relationship marketing and management theory to propose and test a model of the customer- and firm-level consequences of the organizational use of CRM interaction support and customer prioritization tools. The results of data analysis of 295 customer firms nested within 10 provider firms reveal that firm use of CRM interaction support tools is positively related to customers' relationship perceptions, regardless of customer account size. In contrast, the data indicate that use of CRM prioritization tools appears to have positive effects on a firm's larger customers and negative effects on smaller customers. The results also suggest that when considered at an aggregate level, customer perceptions of the exchange relationship are predictive of organizational performance and that the association between these two variables is significant for larger customer accounts but insignificant for smaller accounts. Overall, the study's results help explain some of the inconsistent findings reported in the literature regarding the performance implications of CRM technology use and suggest that use of the technology may serve to enhance organizational performance, at least over the short term.

Previous research has conceptualized and modeled customer orientation (CO) in one of two ways: as a psychological phenomenon antecedent to critical job states (i.e., stress and engagement) or as frontline employee behaviors that are caused by these same job states. Building on meta-analytic data, this study finds greater support for the causal relationships implied by a psychological construal of the construct and reveals that CO influences frontline employees' job outcomes through its effects on stress and engagement. Moderation analyses also indicate that CO's influence on model variables is stronger when frontline employees' customer workloads increase and is weaker as the need for customer persuasion increases. These findings contradict widely held assumptions rooted in a behavioral view of CO—namely, that CO is a consequence of job states, a proximate determinant of job outcomes, and most beneficial when ample opportunity for customer engagement exists. Overall, the results support a broadened perspective that recognizes that CO improves job outcomes because it enhances frontline employees' psychological welfare in addition to being good for business. These findings suggest that managers should consider CO an important criterion in frontline employee decisions, recognize CO as beneficial when limited opportunity for customer engagement exists, and avoid efforts to curtail CO's costs at the frontline employee level.

Building on information processing theory (IPT), this empirical study investigates the factors that drive a buying center's level of sensitivity to brand information. The authors propose that buying center brand sensitivity is related in a curvilinear fashion with purchase importance and purchase complexity, and that these relationships are moderated by several environmental, firm, and product factors. Data provided by 273 organizational buying center members confirm the presence of an inverse U-shaped relationship between purchase importance and brand sensitivity, strengthened in conditions of high brand presence and high end-customer demand. Purchase complexity and brand sensitivity appear to relate in a U-shaped fashion but only in light of the moderating effects of product tangibility. The relationship between purchase complexity and brand sensitivity appears stronger when buying firms are small and have prior contractual ties with their selling partners. These results offer guidance to managers concerning when business-to-business (B2B) brand investments are likely to offer their greatest return.

The dominant perspective on organizational buying behavior suggests that buyers tend to rely on objective criteria when making product choice decisions and that the potential influence of subjective cues, such as brands, on buyer decision making decreases with increasing risk. An alternative perspective, confirmed in this study by in-depth interviews with various managers, suggests that brands serve as a risk-reduction heuristic, whereby the influence of brands on decision making increases as a function of risk. Building on risk and information processing theories, this research builds on these complementary perspectives to propose that risk and brand sensitivity relate in a U-shaped manner, where brand sensitivity is highest in relatively low- or high-risk situations. The results of scenario- and survey-based field studies—involving 206 and 180 members of buying centers, respectively—suggest that both perspectives have merit and support the proposed nonlinear relationship. Moreover, the findings reveal that the risk-brand sensitivity relationship is moderated by competitive intensity, such that the linear (negative) and quadratic (positive) effects are stronger when competitive intensity is low.

Prior research suggests that while business-to-business (B2B) brands influence organizational buying decisions, their relative importance is modest at best. Unfortunately, extant studies are largely silent about the determinants of brand importance in business markets. This research effort begins to address this important knowledge gap by investigating the moderated relationships between brand consciousness, brand preference, brand sensitivity, and brand importance. We propose that these four constructs represent a belief-attitude-intention-behavior hierarchy of effects (HOE) capable of explaining why the relative importance of brands differs across purchase situations. Data provided by 273 organizational buying center members provide strong support for the proposed HOE model and suggest that: (1) under conditions of low competitive intensity or when marketing maintenance repair and operations (MRO) supplies, brand consciousness is the primary determinant of brand importance, and (2) under conditions of high competitive intensity or when marketing high-tech products, brand preference is the primary determinant of brand importance. Moreover, the results indicate that distinctions between the four HOE brand constructs evaluated within this study are important and have substantive implications for branding research and practice.

Due to the effort and expense of recruiting black managers, there is a need to maximize the chances of retaining those that are most productive. Effective mentoring may be one avenue to reach this objective by enhancing job satisfaction and organizational commitment. Using the responses of 139 members of the National Black MBA Association (MBMBAA), this study explored the indirect or mediated effects of demographic (i.e. white mentors–black proteges vs. black mentors–black proteges) and attitudinal (i.e. perceived complementary racial perspectives) similarity on the affective commitment of black managers. The results suggest that attitudinal similarity is a more critical factor than demographic similarity in enhancing mentoring-driven affective commitment among black managers. In addition, the results reveal that in certain circumstances demographic similarity can actually have an adverse impact on the career benefits realized from mentoring relationships.

The influence of a firm’s cause-related marketing efforts on sales representative attitudes and behavioral performance is investigated. Results from a field study indicate that the influence of a representative’s construed customer attitude toward the cause campaign on selling behavioral performance is mediated through cognitive identification and selling confidence. Further, the influence of construed customer attitude toward the campaign on selling confidence is moderated by cognitive identification such that the effects are stronger for salespeople with lower levels of identification with the company. The authors discuss the implications of the research and offer directions for further research.

Literally hundreds of scales have been developed to measure personality constructs relevant to consumer behavior, marketing, and organizational behavior issues. A key problem is that to our knowledge no theory or model has been developed that provides an organizational structure for understanding the relationships among these many scales. The present article has two goals. The first is to present the theoretical basis for the 3M Model of Motivation and Personality [Mowen JC. The 3M Model of Motivation and Personality: Theory and Empirical Applications to Consumer Behavior . Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2000.] and identify how the model works to organize personality constructs into a hierarchically ordered nomological net. In addition, the article illustrates the 3M Model approach via an empirical study that compares the trait antecedents of enduring dispositions to send and receive marketplace information of respondents in the United States and Korea.

Prompted, in part, by the highly publicized failure of customer relationship management (CRM) initiatives, academic research on CRM has begun to flourish. While numerous studies have yielded important insights, the extant CRM literature appears to be inconsistent and is highly fragmented due, primarily, to the lack of a common conceptualization. Thus, to help advance a cohesive body of knowledge on this topic of growing interest and importance, this paper attempts to provide a clear and accurate delineation of CRM's domain. Following the review and analysis of process, strategy, philosophy, capability, and technology-based CRM perspectives, the authors propose that the phenomenon is best conceptualized as an ongoing process that involves the development and leveraging of market intelligence for the purpose of building and maintaining a profit-maximizing portfolio of customer relationships. Based on the proposed conceptualization, a detailed description of the CRM process is provided, along with a comprehensive framework intended to aid marketers in their quest to achieve CRM success.

This empirical study evaluated the moderating effects of unit customer orientation (CO) climate and climate strength on the relationship between service workers' level of CO and their performance of customer-oriented behaviors (COBs). In addition, the study examined whether aggregate COB performance influences unit profitability. Building on multisource, multilevel data, the study's results suggest that the influence of employee CO on employee COB performance is positive when the unit's CO climate is relatively high and that the constructs are unrelated when unit CO climate is relatively low. In addition, the data reveal that unit COB performance influences unit profitability by enhancing revenues without a concomitant increase in costs. The study's results underscore the theoretical importance of considering cross-level influencers of employee-level relationships and suggest that managers should focus on creating a climate that is supportive of COBs if their units are to profit from the recruitment, hiring, and retention of customer-oriented employees.