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Examines how sales managers can affect and improve salesforce performance. Describes the similarities and differences between high‐ and low‐performance salesforces and the ways in which sales management can create the opportunity for salespeople to perform well. Discusses research implications and offers management guidelines to improve the effectiveness of sales organizations.

Presents an assignment model formulation for the machine cell formation problem in cellular manufacturing based on an appropriate definition of dissimilarlity between any pair of machines for the grouping problem. This dissimilarity measure considers the production volume or demand for the parts on the respective machines and forms the cost parameters for the assignment model which is to be minimized. Identification of the machine cells automatically yields the corresponding part groups which are then assigned to the cells. The model is fast‐converging, taking advantage of the well‐proven assignment algorithm. Also presents an algorithm for dealing with mild cases of exceptional elements and too many machine cells. Uses numerical examples to illustrate the model.

Investigates the antecedents and outcomes of salesperson burnout. Prior research on burnout in personal selling is extended by including a more complete set of predictors of burnout, and by testing the conceptual model of burnout using a multi‐company sample of field salespeople in an international setting. Relationships among burnout, attitudes, and behavior are predicted based on relevant literature, and are tested using survey results from 148 field salespeople in Australia. Path analysis results show that the proposed conceptual model fits the data well. Intrinsic motivation, role ambiguity, and role conflict are all significant antecedents of burnout. Job satisfaction and salesperson performance are direct outcomes of burnout, and also mediate the indirect influence of burnout on organizational commitment and intention to leave. Implications for salesforce management and future research are discussed.

Some consideration of the specific SME (small/medium sized enterprises) literature outlining perspectives on pricing practice in SMEs is given in this paper. Outlines some empirical findings gathered from in‐depth interviews with 40 SME owner‐managers in Northern Ireland. The findings provide corroboration of previous studies and expand the understanding of the price perspective for SMEs. Some conclusions are drawn as a result of this study. This paper examines the real implications of pricing in SMEs and shows how pricing fits with marketing in SMEs.

This study aims to investigate age and gender differences in young consumers’ attribute preferences that underlie their choice decisions. This research proposes and finds that attribute preferences are moderated by age but not gender. Understanding how children at different ages evaluate a product’s attributes is essential to new children’s product development.

Hierarchical Bayesian choice-based conjoint analysis was used to assess attribute importance via a series of choice tasks among children and adults. Adults completed the study by survey, whereas children were interviewed and led through the choice tasks.

This research finds that the preference structure for a product’s attributes differs systematically based on the age of children. Younger children chose based on perceptually salient attributes of a product, whereas older children chose based on cognitively salient attributes. When children’s attribute preferences are compared to adults, older children value attributes more similarly to adults than younger children. While gender differences were proposed and found, further analysis indicated that these differences were driven by adults in the sample and that no gender differences existed in the children’s age categories.

This study is the first to study children’s preference structure in complex choices with different ages preferring different attributes. By using conjoint analysis, this research is able to understand children’s underlying decision process, as utility scores are obtained providing a level of precision for understanding the underlying process of children’s choices that other studies have not used.

Cardiac function generally deteriorates with increasing age, although recent research has found a reversal in this decline in a group of middle‐aged individuals after 18 weeks of brisk walking in single daily bouts of between 20‐40 minutes. Government guidelines advocate accumulative short bouts of exercise for the promotion of health. The purpose of this study was to determine whether accumulative short walking bouts were as effective at producing changes in cardiac function as those previously found from single daily bouts. Presents the results of post‐intervention ANCOVA statistical analysis of 64 healthy men and women, aged 40‐68 years, who were not habitual exercisers, who were randomly divided into matched groups of either short walkers or controls who were also not habitual exercisers.

To highlight content of interest to this journal’s readership that promotes current thinking and activities in Information Technology.

Selective conference report of the annual meeting of the American Library Association and pre‐conference.

The largest conference of librarians, the variety of programs, activities, exhibit halls, creates one of the best professional development opportunities for librarians. Attracting librarians from all sectors and work environments from around the globe, this conference is hard to describe in a brief way except to say it is an experience. The article documents relevant programs about information technology was the goal of this contribution.

Contains information of particular interest to readers who did not attend these sessions. Introducers them to presenters and important hot topics. Provides an alternative to not being present while gaining some information and coverage.

This paper examines a user categorisation of documents related to a particular literary work. Fifty study participants completed an unconstrained sorting task of documents related to Charles Dickens’ A Christmas carol. After they had finished the sorting task, participants wrote descriptions of the attributes they used to create each group. Content analysis of these descriptions revealed categories of attributes used for grouping. Participants used physical format, audience, content description, pictorial elements, usage, and language most frequently for grouping. Many of the attributes participants used for grouping already exist in bibliographic records and may be used to cluster records related to works automatically in online catalogue displays. The attributes used by people in classifying or grouping documents related to a work may be used to guide the design of summary online catalogue work displays.