Search results

Mobile technologies have become indispensable in sales. However, there is a lack of agreement about whether mobile technology use facilitates the sales job or contributes to the salesperson’s stress and reduced job satisfaction. To address this controversy, this study aims to examine the effect of mobile technology use (smartphones, laptop computers and tablets) on salespeople’s role stress and job satisfaction.

Hypotheses are tested using responses of 265 sales employees working for a broad range of industries in Spain.

This study shows that mobile technology use during working hours has a positive effect on job satisfaction through a mediating process that involves role stress. In addition, the impact of mobile technology use on role stress is strengthened by technological compatibility.

The current study extends previous research by moving beyond a focus on technology-centric outcomes (i.e. sales performance) to understanding broader, more psychological outcomes, namely, role stress and job satisfaction. Importantly, previous research reporting that salespeople feel “plugged in” to a device all day have not made the distinction about when the mobile device is used. One important difference in this study is that it exclusively focuses on mobile technology use during working hours.

The purpose of this study is to examine how a service provider’s offer quality is evaluated (OQ).This study shows that attitude toward the salesperson in a service context (AS) is an important antecedent to OQ.

This study involves three studies, first is a dyadic data analyzed with HLM, second is an experiment and the third an IAT.

The findings of this study show that active empathetic listening increases offer quality evaluations, regardless of the AS level. However, at lower levels of AS, sales perseverance negatively affects offer quality evaluations.

While research suggests that listening is extremely important, there is also research that suggests that perseverance is more important. Considering data from sales people and from consumers, the authors examine when listening and when perseverance is important.

The purpose of this paper is twofold: first, to examine a customer orientation mechanism through which abusive supervision influences retail salespeople’s job performance; and second, to investigate how abusive supervision’s effects may be moderated by the same leader’s use of contingent punishment and contingent reward.

Two studies provide consistent findings. Study 1 used the field survey data from 129 salespeople in 42 retail stores. The proposed moderated mediation model was estimated using the random coefficient modeling technique. Findings were replicated in Study 2, in which data were collected from a sample of 679 US retail salespeople recruited through M-Turk.

Results from both studies show that abusive supervision reduces salespeople’s job performance through lowering their customer orientation. Furthermore, the use of contingent punishment from the same supervisor buffers abusive supervision’s detrimental effect, whereas the use of contingent reward augments it.

The issues the authors address in this research have significant implications for the literature of abusive supervision and retail selling. First, the authors contribute to the abusive supervision literature by pointing it out that the negative effect of abusive supervision can spill over to organizations’ external stakeholders, namely, customers. Previous research on abusive supervision has mainly focused on how abused subordinates exhibit hostile acts directed against the supervisor, coworkers and the organization (Tepper et al., 2017), with little attention paid to abusive supervision’s impact on organizations’ external stakeholders such as customers. This research fills the void by placing impaired customer-orientation as a critical consequence of abusive supervision. Second, this research tests a contingent self-regulation impairment model of abusive supervision and advances our understanding about how the same supervisor’s functional leadership behaviors (contingent reward/punishment) may set contingencies for the effect of abusive supervision on employee outcomes. This investigation clears the doubts about whether the use of functional leadership behaviors along with abusive supervision buffers or aggravates the detrimental effect of the latter. Finally, this study’s findings shed new insights to marketing practitioners, especially in understanding how salespeople may vent their stress on the customers when being abused by their supervisors. Without this in mind, supervisors may not be aware of the consequences of their abusive behavior and may even develop an illusion that such a practice worked. This research shows that abusive supervision can lower employees’ customer orientation, which will hurt the company in the long run.

The findings intend to provide important guidelines for companies to develop effective workshops and training programs to combat the detrimental effects of abusive supervision in the retailing industry. For example, the findings shed new insights in understanding how employees may vent their stress on the customers when being abused by their supervisors. Without this in mind, supervisors may not be aware of the consequences of their abusive behavior and may even develop an illusion that such a practice worked. Another important managerial implication of this research is that the use of contingent reward after mistreating subordinates can backfire. Supervisor abuses, followed by a contingent reward, send an inconsistent signal to the employee that creates confusion and strain. Inconsistent actions from the supervisor also produce ethical tensions that reduce customer-oriented behaviors and a company’s ability to serve the customer (Friend et al., 2020). These training programs are important methods to combat the detrimental effects of abusive supervision in the workforce.

This research draws on the contingent self-regulation impairment model as an overarching framework to unpack the relationship between abusive supervision and salespeople’s job performance. Integrating three research streams (i.e. abusive supervision, leadership reinforcement and retail selling), this study proposes customer orientation as a novel mechanism and sheds light on how abusive supervision interplays with contingent punishment/reward to impact salespeople’s outcomes.

The aim of this study is to reveal the contribution that Journal of Business & Industrial Marketing has to scientific research and its most influential thematic work in B-to-B since its beginning in 1986 until 2015, in commemoration of the 30th anniversary.

The paper begins with a qualitative introduction: the emergence of the magazine, its origins, editorial and positioning. Subsequently, it is based on bibliometric methodologies to develop quantitative analysis. The distribution of annual publications is analyzed, the most cited papers, the keywords that are mostly used, the influence on the publishing industry and authors, universities and the countries that have the most publications.

The predominant role of the USA at all levels is highlighted. It also highlights the presence (given its size and population) of the countries of Northern Europe. There is great interest in appreciating the evolution of the number of publications that are always increasing which demonstrates the growing and sustained interest in these types of articles, with certain times of retreat (often coincide with economic crisis).

The Scopus database gives one unit to each author, university or country involved in the paper, without distinguishing whether it was one or more authors in the study. Therefore, this may bring some deviations in the analysis. However, the study considers some figures with fractional counting to partially solve these limitations.

After observing the different perspectives of the journal’s production, it allows to give an objective view of the evolution that the Journal of Business & Industrial Marketing has had in the past 30 years.

It is part of the trend that several journals (Journal of Marketing, Journal of Public Policy & Marketing, Journal of Marketing Research, Journal of Business Research) made special sections to show progress and contribution of these journals to scientific research.

The purpose of this study is to build on previous research on stress in sales forces to investigate the effect of perceptions of time wasted on salespersons' attitudes and behavioral intentions.

Responses from 400 salespeople who work in 49 business units of four Ecuadorian financial institutions were used to test a conceptual stress model. The research hypotheses were tested with a structural equation model.

Salespeople operating in the banking industry are prone to be dissatisfied, emotionally exhausted, and are likely to quit when they believe that their time or their efforts have been wasted or used ineffectively.

Ecuadorian samples adequately represent Latin American banking employees. However, individuals from collectivistic countries, such as Ecuador, have a more relaxed view of time. Hence, perceptions of time wasted may have a greater effect on job attitudes and behaviors in the USA than in Ecuador.

Success in sales requires effective time management. However, salespeople are sometimes required to perform activities that they can perceive as wasteful. Managers should be aware that performing wasteful activities leads to emotional exhaustion and high intentions to quit.

This is the first study to empirically test the effect of time wasted on organizational variables.

The purpose is to investigate, the difference between SERVQUAL and SERVPERF's predictive validity of service quality.

Data from 17 studies containing 42 effect sizes of the relationships between SERVQUAL or SERVPERF with overall service quality (OSQ) are meta‐analyzed.

Overall, SERVQUAL and SERVPERF are equally valid predictors of OSQ. Adapting the SERVQUAL scale to the measurement context improves its predictive validity; conversely, the predictive validity of SERVPERF is not improved by context adjustments. In addition, measures of services quality gain predictive validity when used in: less individualistic cultures, non‐English speaking countries, and industries with an intermediate level of customization (hotels, rental cars, or banks).

No study, that were using non‐adapted scales were conducted outside of the USA making it impossible to disentangle the impact of scale adaptation vs contextual differences on the moderating effect of language and culture. More comparative studies on the usage of adapted vs non‐adapted scales outside the USA are needed before settling this issue meta‐analytically.

SERVQUAL scales require to be adapted to the study context more so than SERVPERF. Owing to their equivalent predictive validity the choice between SERVQUAL or SERVPERF should be dictated by diagnostic purpose (SERVQUAL) vs a shorter instrument (SERVPERF).

Because of the high statistical power of meta‐analysis, these findings could be considered as a major step toward ending the debate whether SERVPERF is superior to SERVQUAL as an indicator of OSQ.

This research seeks to explore the role played by ethical reputation in amplifying the positive impact of value received by the customer on satisfaction with the supplier and ultimately loyalty.

Survey responses derived from 299 customers, concerning two large financial institutions within Chile, are used to test relationships among ethical perceptions, customer value, satisfaction, and loyalty. Hypotheses are tested with a structural equation model.

Results show that ethical perceptions about the organization amplify the impact of customer value on customer satisfaction and eventually loyalty.

This study contributes to the existing literature by showing that ethical perceptions from customers can help financial institutions achieve higher levels of satisfaction and loyalty. Study findings rely on customer survey responses collected in one country and one industry. Generalizability of findings is yet to be tested.

Ethical reputation helps financial institutions retain their customers.

This is the first study showing that customer perceptions about company ethics amplify the positive impact of customer value on customer satisfaction.

In the years since Saxe and Weitz developed a scale to measure the selling orientation and customer orientation (SOCO) of a salesperson, research findings on the effect of SOCO on salesperson job performance have shown mixed results. This article aims to synthesize the findings from the empirical studies to identify the direction and the strength of this relationship. In addition, it aims to investigate the moderating effect of customer type (business or end user consumer) and type of job performance measure used (subjective or objective).

Research questions were addressed by a meta‐analysis of 16 studies containing 17 effect sizes from 3,477 respondents.

Meta‐analysis results reveal an attenuated weighted mean effect size (r) of this relationship of 0.14, with a 90 percent confidence interval of 0.04 to 0.23. The disattenuated mean effect size (rc) is 0.16. Findings also reveal that neither customer type nor type of job performance measures moderated the SOCO and job performance relationship.

Although diligence was exercised to reduce selection bias, relevant studies may have been excluded from this meta‐analysis.

Study findings demonstrate that SOCO is an important predictor of salesperson job performance. High performance occurs when salespeople focus their energy on identifying the customer's individual needs and offer products to satisfy those needs.

This is the first published SOCO meta‐analysis.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate why salespeople resist change and the impact of resistance to change on customer responsiveness and performance outcomes.

Survey responses derived from 233 salespeople from three large financial institutions in Mexico are used to test relationships involving salespersons’ resistance to change.

Salespeople are more likely to resist change if they believe that change increases their workload. They are less likely to resist change when they have higher levels of job autonomy and self‐efficacy. Resistance to change has a negative impact on customer responsiveness and salesperson's performance.

This study makes an important contribution to the literature by identifying factors that explain salesperson's resistance to change. Study findings rely on salesperson survey responses collected in one country and industry. Future research is needed to assess the generalizability of findings and causality of the proposed relationships.

Resistance to change affects the salespersons’ capacity to respond to customer demands and ultimately undermines performance. Managers can help reduce resistance to change by providing salespeople with greater job autonomy and by explaining how change affects their workload.

To the authors’ knowledge, this is the first paper linking salesperson resistance to change to job performance.