Search results

This paper examines the antecedents of adaptive selling behavior empirically from the salespeople's, customers', and firms' perspectives.

Survey design was used for this study. Data from 219 salespeople and their visiting customers in selected cosmetics companies in Korea are used to test the conceptual model using structural equation modeling.

Findings show that intrinsic motivation, empathy, and product knowledge are germane to adaptive selling behavior among salesperson-level factors. Similarly, among the customer-level factors, the length of the relationship between salespeople and customers positively affects adaptive selling behavior. Also, while supervisory empowerment among the organizational-level factors significantly predicts adaptive selling behavior, supervisory control has a negative effect on adaptive selling behavior. The study finds that emotional intelligence and customer value demandingness do not significantly affect adaptive selling behavior.

Even though there is extant research on adaptive selling behavior, our research differs from previous research because our research focuses on door-to-door personal selling channels. Furthermore, this study departs from previous research because it uses customer-reporting of the salespeople and salespeople's self-reporting responses.

The purpose of this study is to establish, drawing upon the indirect effects of customer reactance from an emerging economy perspective, the marketing implications of policy induced Mergers and Acquisitions (M&A) in Financial Services.

The study employed a quantitative research approach, relying on data from 517 customers of M&A banks in Ghana. Purposive sampling technique was used in selecting respondents for the study. Hypotheses were tested using a structural equation modelling.

A positive and significant relationship between immersive marketing communication and consumer intention is revealed in the study. The presence of consumer reactance highly influenced the relationship. As a public policy tool, forced mergers and acquisitions was found to increase customer reactance. However, when customers are frequently engaged with relevant and consistent marketing communications through appropriate channels, such reactance would only be partial.

Although some of the information were collected, they were not the main focus of our analysis. We acknowledge, from the sample demographics perspective, the study did not consider certain other confounding factors that could influence customers' decisions to remain or switch such as customers' level of banking, type of account, income level, banking experiences in relation to service fees, online banking etc., as these could also potentially influence customers' reactance. Perhaps these may have to be considered in future studies.

When timely and relevant marketing communications are targeted at the customers who are directly impacted by the M&A process, they would experience reactance, but only partially. This has a range of marketing implications for policy-induced M&A and its impact on consumer intention, reactance and attitudes towards the new entity.

The marketing of financial services literature has been silent on the implications of M&A from a policy induced perspective. This study, therefore, contributes to theory by highlighting that the “destruction” of brand value of the affected firms is relatively high in a policy induced M&A and thus increases the level of customer reactance. This is because a regulator enforced M&A, as public policy, usually generates high public interest and public discourse, leading to a heightened customer reactance. However, when immersive marketing communications are targeted at the customers directly impacted by the M&A, they would experience reactance, but only partially.

This study aims to investigate the new connotations, key antecedents, outcomes and contingency factors of value-based selling (VBS) in the context of business to business (B2B) industrial marketing.

This study develops a comprehensive conceptual framework of VBS by analyzing and synthesizing the existing literature on VBS and associated solutions.

The paper describes the research streams of VBS; proposes a comprehensive conceptual framework consisting of the factors influencing VBS at the organizational, individual, customer and environmental levels, together with 12 research propositions; and provides an agenda for future research.

The paper is conceptual; empirical studies are required for examining the suggested propositions and agenda.

VBS is a process-oriented sales approach that involves multiple value creation and plays a crucial role in industrial solution selling. The successful implementation of VBS depends on the micro-foundations of an organization’s dynamic capabilities and considers the influence of individual, customer and environmental factors.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first to introduce value co-creation and dynamic capability theory into VBS research in the context of industrial marketing. It discusses the antecedents, outcomes and contingency factors of VBS in detail in the form of a comprehensive research framework and proposes a future research agenda. These discussions expand the theoretical research on VBS and provide useful implications for B2B marketing practice.

This paper aims to explore the relationships among cost accounting systems structure and information quality properties through an integrated framework of cost system design and use.

In the framework, cost accounting systems structure is defined in terms of the level of detailed information existence, the cost disaggregation according to behaviour, the scope of variances calculation and the frequency of cost information provision. Cost information quality expresses its perceived usefulness by the users in terms of relevance, accuracy, timeliness, usability, compatibility with their needs, up‐to‐datedness, reliability and thoroughness for decision‐making purposes. In order to investigate the existing relationships, data were gathered from 119 leading Greek manufacturing companies via a questionnaire survey.

The empirical findings indicate that the majority of cost accounting systems structure characteristics exert a statistically significant positive influence on cost information quality dimensions. Only the systems' ability to disaggregate costs according to behaviour and their capability to generate customized to user specifications reports were not found to be statistically significantly associated with information quality.

The authors believe that their conclusions have important implications for researchers and professionals with respect to cost systems design as well as cost systems evaluation.

The innovation of the study lies in the development of an integrated framework that encompasses both cost systems structure characteristics and cost information effectiveness features.

Return policies are major risk-allaying cues for customers, yet they are a critical cost/lost-sales for retailers. Despite their importance in the retailing industry, few studies have examined the interplay of return policies with other cues that customers use to make a purchase decision. Toward this end, this study aims to investigate the interaction effects certain salient high-scope and low-scope cues, such as consumer ratings and brand image, and retailers’ return policies have on consumer purchase decisions.

Building on literature from signaling theory and cue scope literature (high-scope and low-scope cues), the authors develop a research model that hypothesizes the interrelationships between return policies, price discounts, customer product ratings and brand image. Three experimental studies investigate the potential interplay between return policies (lenient vs stringent), price discounts (low vs high), customer product ratings (low vs high) and brand image (high vs low) on quality certainty perceptions and purchase intentions. The mediating effect of quality certainty perceptions on the interplay of various factors (return policy, price promotions, consumer ratings and brand image) and customer purchase intentions is also investigated.

Results indicate that a lenient return policy will have a positive effect when consumers encounter high scope cues that signal undesirable aspects of the product (i.e. low consumer ratings, low brand image). In contrast, when high scope cues signal desirable aspects of the product (i.e. high consumer ratings, high brand image), it attenuates the effects of return policy. The findings suggest that quality certainty acts as a psychological process.

Service researchers should seek to examine the role of return policies in a more comprehensive manner.

Return policies are important cues for consumers while making purchase decision. Thus, retailers need to realize that these policies may need to be more dynamic or tiered, rather than one-size-fits-all.

This study provides a more comprehensive view of how consumers consider multiple cues simultaneously in decision-making. Literature has mainly examined the interactions between different high-scope and low-scope cues, but there has been limited research directed toward the interplay between multiple high-scope cues.

Informed by trait and self-determination theories, the present study aims to extend the knowledge regarding the link between customer satisfaction (CS) and its antecedents, including job autonomy (JA), conscientiousness, customer uncertainty (CU) and extra-role customer service (E-RCS) in the hospitality industry.

A total of 306 frontline employees were selected from the hotels in North Cyprus, Turkey. Psychometric properties, including the validity and reliability of study variables, were assessed in the first step using confirmatory factor analysis. Then, the data were analyzed utilizing machine learning methods, mainly three exploratory data mining techniques, including lasso regression, decision trees and random forest, as well as partial dependence plots to visualize the role of suggested predictors on the outcome variable.

Data mining analysis shows that employees who can modify their job objectives are better equipped to satisfy customers in uncertain situations (JA8). In addition, the findings reveal that employees who believe they work hard to accomplish their personal and organizational goals (CON7) while also having the freedom to decide how to approach their job (JA1) and choose the procedures to utilize (JA2) are more likely to contribute to CS. In general, CS peaked when JA was high, but conscientiousness was moderate, while CU was low.

This study bridges the gap among various factors at the employee and customer individual, corporate and macro-environmental levels. Hospitality organizations can cultivate a culture of autonomy and independence by promoting open communication and offering growth and development opportunities. This approach enhances conscientious employees’ engagement, leading to exceptional customer service performance, particularly, in uncertain situations.

From the methodology perspective, this work proposes an opportunity for prospective scientists to broaden the trait and self-determination theories research model by relying on the riches of exploratory techniques without the limits imposed by traditional analytical techniques. Further, this study advances the current knowledge about service agility under uncertainty by extending organizational and service management research to consumer behavior literature.

This paper aims to show that whether new customers respond well or poorly to small talk at the beginning of a service encounter depends on their relationship orientation, i.e. how exchange or communally oriented they are. The authors provide service providers with tactics to identify first-time customers’ relationship orientation or set customers’ small talk expectations and thus help them use small talk more effectively.

The authors examine the effect of small talk and relationship orientation on customer intentions to use a service provider in three experiments and one cross-sectional survey. The scenario-based experiments show causality and the effect in online and in-person scenarios. The survey replicates the effect among current customers of a small business.

Communally oriented customers respond positively to small talk, but exchange-oriented customers respond negatively to it. Mediation analyses reveal this occurs because small talk differentially leads to initial feelings of rapport and impatience for people high (versus low) in relationship orientation.

Service providers should consider customers’ relationship orientation before starting a conversation with small talk. The authors find providers can identify exchange-oriented customers by their choice of meeting format (in-person v. video chat). Managers can also use marketing materials to attract customers with a specific relationship orientation or to set customer expectations for small talk in the interaction.

Prior research has largely shown benefits to small talk, but the authors show significant downsides for some customers and to the best of the authors’ knowledge are the first to show process evidence of why these drawbacks occur.

The purpose of this study is to develop a comprehensive model of retailer–customer relationship.

Data were collected using questionnaires administered at organized grocery retail outlets in India. A total of 612 customers were surveyed.

Empirical evidence suggests that perception of merchandise quality depends upon perception of quality of services. It is also found that apart from store-level attributes, customer-level attributes also play an important role in retailer–customer long-term relationships.

Retailers would be benefited by an in-depth knowledge of factors that determine long-term relationships with customers. The finding of the study implies that efforts of retailers to retain customers should be directed toward the right set of customers. In the present study, details about customer-level attributes will benefit retailers to target the right set of customers. Academicians would be benefitted by developing in-depth understanding about different store- and customer-level attributes that determine retailer–customer long-term relationship.

The model developed in this study depicts the impact of retailer’s effort as perceived by customers and customer’s values, on commitment. There are very few studies in this area in the context of grocery retail which has taken customer-level attributes that motivates them to develop long-term relationships. Coming to the Indian context, very little work is being done.

Corporate reputation is a strategic asset leading to numerous positive firm-level outcomes. Motivated by the prediction that the translation of customer-based corporate reputation to customer-level outcomes (trust, customer–company identification, and word-of-mouth intentions) might be highly context-dependent, we investigate the moderating role of national culture (particularly, individualism–collectivism dimension) and individual trait (self-construal) in the association between reputational dimensions (product and service efficacy, market prominence, and societal ethicality) and their outcomes. Using survey data from two countries (US and India, N = 812), we estimate the effects of corporate reputation on focal outcomes, moderated by country as a proxy for individualism/collectivism and independent self-construal (IND)/interdependent self-construal (INTER). The results strongly suggest that when individual-level variables are taken into account, the country-level variable does not affect the translation of reputational dimensions to customer-level outcomes. Moreover, individuals high on IND are more responsive to utilitarian (egoistic) reputational dimensions of product and service efficacy, whereas individuals high on INTER are more sensitive to the group-oriented reputation for market prominence and society-oriented reputation for social ethicality. The reported findings have major implications for cross-country reputational research and global reputation management strategies.