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Sales organizations embrace technological innovation. However, salespeople’s willingness to use new technology influences a firm’s return on investment, representing a significant concern for the organization. These concerns highlight tensions regarding the tradeoffs associated with technology implementations. The purpose of this study is to offer insights that help reduce the complexities of sales technology (ST) by exploring the changing dynamics of contemporary business relationships.

This paper synthesizes the ST literature using the service ecosystem perspective to propose the sales techno-ecosystem (STE) framework, providing new insights into organizational decision-making related to the ongoing digital transformation of sales tasks.

This synthesis of the ST literature with the service ecosystem seeks to clarify the impact of technology within the evolving nature of buyer–seller relationships by providing four unique perspectives.

Perspective 1 reviews the sales-service ecosystem framework and develops the theoretical underpinnings and relevant terminologies. Perspective 2 summarizes critical aspects of the ST literature and provides foundations for future research in the STE. Perspective 3 offers a more granular view, explicating roles and contexts prevalent in buyer–seller–technology interactions. Perspective 4 provides a set of tenets and advances research questions related to each tenet.

The culmination of these four perspectives is the introduction of five key tenants designed to help guide strategy and research.

The paper advances Hartmann et al. (2018) service ecosystem paradigm by explicating critical aspects of its ST domain to generate insights for theory and practice.

This paper aims to investigate whether preferences for certain types of privacy predict the frequency and duration of social media usage as well as the moderating role of gender on these relationships.

An e-mail-based survey among the faculty, staff and students of a medium-sized mid-western university is used to gather data regarding preferences for privacy and social media usage. Using 530 respondents, structural equation modeling explores the relationship between the various privacy types, gender and social media usage.

Evidence supports a relationship between four types of privacy preferences and social media usage. A positive relationship exists between frequency of social media usage and a preference for not neighboring. Duration of social media usage shows a negative relationship with preferences for seclusion and reserve, and surprisingly, a positive relationship with a preference for anonymity. Gender moderates the relationship between preference for privacy and social media usage, offering evidence that intimacy, seclusion and reserve predict social media usage for males, while not neighboring and anonymity predict usage for females.

The study extends the privacy literature through investigating differential impacts of privacy preferences. The marketing literature examines privacy as a general concept, without allowing for differences in consumers' preferences for types of privacy. Additionally, the study shows that gender moderates the relationship between preferences for privacy and social media usage. A second contribution is investigating the relevance of a scale, developed in an age without social media, to an era permeated in social media.

It is unclear whether information obtained from a one parent can be used to infer the other parent's history of psychopathology. Two hundred and one parental dyads were asked to complete psychiatric interviews. Based on maternal report, non-participating husbands/ fathers had higher rates than participating fathers of psychiatric illness. For fathers who did participate, maternal report did not match direct interview of paternal psychopathology with sensitivities less than 0.40 and positive predictive values of 0.33 to 0.74. Psychopa -thology may be over-represented among fathers who do not participate in research. Mother report of paternal symptoms is not an effective proxy. Alternative methods need to be developed to: i) improve father participation or ii) identify psychiatric status in fathers who do not participate in research projects.

Understanding parental psychopathology interaction is important in preventing negative family outcomes. This study investigated the effect of paternal psychiatric history on maternal depressive symptom trajectory from birth to 12 months postpartum. Maternal Edinburgh Postpartum Depression screens were collected at 1, 6 and 12 months and fathers' psychiatric diagnoses were assessed with the Structured Clinical Interview for DSM-IV from 64 families. There was not a significant difference in the trajectory of maternal depressive symptoms between mothers with partners with history of or a current psychiatric condition or those without a condition. However, mothers with partners with substance abuse history had higher levels of depressive symptoms relative to those affected by mood/anxiety disorders or those without a disorder. Our results call for a closer look at paternal history of substance abuse when treating postpartum maternal depression.

The development of chemical sensors based on nanostructures, such as nanotubes or nanowires, depends on the capability to reproducibly control the processing of the sensor. Alignment and consistent electrical contact of nanostructures on a microsensor platform is challenging. This can be accomplished using labor‐intensive approaches, specialized processing technology, or growth of nanostructures in situ. However, the use of standard microfabrication techniques for fabricating nanostructured microsensors is problematic. The purpose of this paper is to address this challenge using standard photoresist processing combined with dielectrophoresis.

Nanostructures are suspended in photoresist and aligned between opposing sawtooth electrode patterns using an alternating current (AC) electric field (dielectrophoresis). The use of photoresist processing techniques allow the burying of the nanostructures between layers of metal, thus improving the electrical contact of the nanostructures to the microsensor platform.

This approach is demonstrated for both multi‐walled carbon nanotubes and tin oxide nanowires. Preliminary data show the electrical continuity of the sensor structure as well as the response to various gases.

It is concluded that this approach demonstrates a foundation for a new tool for the fabrication of microsensors using nanostructures, and can be expanded towards enabling the combination of common microfabrication techniques with nanostructured sensor development.

This approach is intended to address the significant barriers of deposition control, contact robustness, and simplified processing to realizing the potential of nanotechnology as applied to sensors.

The purpose of this paper is to identify variables that intervene in the relationship between shopping center image and frequency of visits to that shopping center. Variables investigated as intervening are desires, intentions, and positive anticipated emotions.

The method uses a two wave mail survey. One wave gathers intentions and variables antecedent to intentions while a second wave gathers behavioral data.

Findings suggest that desire (i.e. motivation), intention, and positive anticipated emotions intervene between shopping center image and frequency of shopping center visits. Positive anticipated emotions are not emotions felt while shopping but are the expected emotional consequences of achieving a goal, in this case visiting a shopping center. Visiting a shopping center might be a goal in itself or it could be the means to goal attainment (e.g. shopping to get a product).

A limitation of the study is that results are aggregated across types of shopping centers and across respondent classifications.

Results provide evidence that desire, intention, and positive anticipated emotions intervene between shopping center image and frequency of visits to the shopping center. Implications for shopping center managers are guidance for allocating resources towards increasing desire, intention, and positive anticipated emotions.

The value of this study is investigation of the process by which shopping center image impacts the frequency of visits to a shopping center. Focusing on this process should allow shopping center managers to more efficiently allocate resources. The value of this study is offering resource allocation guidance to shopping center managers.

E‐service is a critical strategic marketing consideration today for many firms, based largely on the promise of more cost‐effective models of self‐service relative to large (and expensive) call centers for technical support and customer service. The rapidly emerging electronic customer relationship management (e‐CRM) industry provides the primary tools for implementing e‐service. Interestingly, the e‐CRM industry faces the same challenges and strategic marketing considerations as their organizational customers, in that they must deliver exceptional service and support to the companies purchasing/using e‐CRM software. A review of organizational mission/vision statements suggests that e‐CRM companies are generally positioning themselves as exemplars of customer satisfaction provision and relationship management. However, recent industry analysis suggests that their organizational customers generally report low to ambivalent ratings on customer satisfaction measures (our study also supports these findings). This discrepancy could be partly attributed to very little empirical inquiry having appeared to date to assess the efficacy of existing relationship marketing theories within this fast‐moving industry. The current study provides an exploratory investigation that looks at the well‐established (in other marketing settings) relative influences of quality, customer satisfaction, and loyalty in the formation of future purchase intentions and word‐of‐mouth behaviors within the e‐CRM industry. Concludes that e‐CRM marketers must first identify means of increasing the overall level of customer satisfaction within their industry, and then begin to consider moving beyond customer satisfaction toward broader loyalty‐based strategic marketing objectives to support their relationship marketing practices. Practitioner and research implications of the reported study are discussed.

To critically assesses the extent to which consumers are being empowered by the internet, focusing specifically on the role of the internet in the context of online pension information provision.

A mixed method study involving focus groups and observational research. Focus groups explored consumer meanings of empowerment and pension information needs. Actual information provision was measured using a content analysis of a sample of 20 pension web sites from 1996 to 2004 accessed from the internet archive.

While consumers generally feel that the internet is empowering, the sense of empowerment has not been fully realised in the context of pensions. The findings reveal gaps between consumer needs for information and information provision with implications for pension providers and consumers.

Relies on consumers' own reported information needs. Pensions are complex and consumers may not fully appreciate the most relevant information in order to make an informed pension decision. Researching professional financial advisors could close the loop and help understand what information consumers should be using to make decisions.

Provides useful insights for pension providers and employers in understanding the value of pension web sites and the features/facilities that consumers value most in using them.

Addresses a key concern of government – insufficient pension provision – and helps to understand how the internet can be used to engage consumers in pensions and encourage them to take greater responsibility for and ownership of their retirement saving.