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This study investigates the role of knowledge collecting and donating in enhancing relationship proneness and intimacy and improving a bank's salesperson satisfaction and performance.

Using the snowball technique, 315 online questionnaires were collected from commercial banks. A total of 300 useable questionnaires were included for further analysis.

The findings demonstrated that knowledge collecting affects relationship proneness and salesperson performance, while knowledge donating affects relationship proneness but not satisfaction. The results also suggested that relationship proneness is responsible for salesperson intimacy. Furthermore, intimacy was found to affect salesperson performance and satisfaction. Finally, salesperson satisfaction was found to affect salesperson performance positively.

The findings help bankers understand and utilize the power of their knowledge management in improving their sales performance and developing suitable training and strategies to strengthen salesperson intimacy.

This study incorporated knowledge management, relationship proneness and intimacy to enhance a better understanding of how these indicators will affect the salesperson's satisfaction and performance.

Companies are adopting innovative methods for responsiveness and efficiency in the public transport sector. The implementation of air-taxi services (ATS) in the transport sector is a move in this direction. Air taxis have a two-pronged advantage as they can reduce travel times by avoiding traffic congestion and have the potential to reduce carbon footprint compared to traditional modes of public transportation. Many companies worldwide are developing and testing ATS for practical applications. However, many factors may play a significant role in adopting ATS in the transport sector. This paper attempts to unearth such critical success factors (CSFs) and establish the interrelationships between these factors.

Fifteen CSFs were identified by systematically reviewing the literature and taking experts' input. An integrated multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) technique, Decision-Making Trial and Evaluation Laboratory-Analytic Network Process (DEMATEL-ANP [DANP]) was used to envisage the causal relationships between the identified CSF.

The results reveal that Govt Regulations (GOR), Skilled Workforce (SKF) and Conductive Research Environment (CRE) are the most influential factors that impact the adoption of ATS in the transport sector.

The research implications of these findings will help practitioners and policymakers effectively implement ATS in the public transportation sector.

This is the first kind of study that identifies and explores the different CSFs for ATS implementation in public transportation. The CSFs are evaluated with the help of a framework built with inputs from logistics experts. The study recognizes the CSFs for ATS implementation and provides a foundation for future research and smooth adoption of ATS.

This paper aims to investigate business-to-business sales executives’ navigation of challenges and changes in planning during two separate periods (prevaccine and postvaccine) of time, which were impacted by a disruptive event (the COVID-19 pandemic).

This study uses a two-phase qualitative data collection approach. Thirteen executives, primarily from the Business-to-Business (B2B) manufacturing industry, were interviewed in phase one (2–3 months before the first COVID-19 vaccine). The second period of data collection was collected 4–5 months after vaccines became available.

The prevaccine business environment focused on short-term challenges, while the vaccine created exponential changes to long-term sales practices, suggesting the need to focus on critical inflection points that occur after the initial disruptive event.

This exploratory study is a step toward developing a deeper understanding of managing disruptive events within a business-to-business sales environment by stressing the importance of both the actual disruptive event and the inflection points that follow the event.

New business models are constantly developing and evolving. However, this study suggests the biggest changes could occur after an inflection point from the disruption. Thus, firms need to consider different planning strategies before and after certain inflection points following a disruptive event. First, firms should adapt from their predisruption strategy to focus on short-term challenges during the initial phases of a disruption, likely halting most of the long-term planning. Second, inflection points create the need to move beyond short-term challenges and changes to focus on long-term changes. Third, long-term strategies and planning postinflection point will be different, and likely more complex, than long-term strategies and planning predisruption.

Most studies look at a disruptive event through a single data collection period. This longitudinal study compares prevaccine and postvaccine thought processes to explore the impact of an inflection point.

The next generation of mobility is arising, and various challenging mobilities have entered the limelight. One of the most exciting of these is urban air mobility (UAM), and one of its challenges is constructing effective and efficient UAM service network. This study took a quantitative approach to the problem in an effort to support and facilitate the UAM service industry.

This study derived a multi-objective and multi-period (MOMP) location optimization model to support strategic UAM service network design. The model, based on its long-term service plan, determines where and when to open UAM airports. In addition, this study applied a modified e-constraint algorithm to derive managerial decisions on the Pareto relationship in consideration of multiple objectives and multiple periods.

Each Pareto solution represents a different UAM service network configuration. Thus, the model can analyze the trade-offs between Pareto decisions for the UAM service network. A case study of UAM service network design in South Korea demonstrates the validity of the proposed mathematical model and algorithm.

The design of a UAM service network should consider various aspects. Its construction and operation would require significant investments of time, capital and people, which would redound to society over a significant span of time. The results of this study provide quantitative guidelines for derivation and analysis of various UAM service network configurations in consideration of multiple objectives and multiple periods.

This paper proposes MOMP optimization, which approach is suitable to the fundamental characteristics of expanding UAM service networks and their design. It is expected that the present study will make significant contributions to the efforts of those deriving and analyzing future UAM service networks.

Waste management is a crucial aspect of sustainable development, but is it economically sustainable for marginalized informal firms? The study tries to answer this question by revisiting the Porter–Wagner dilemma about the association between environmental management (EM) and firm performance (FP). The study looks into the various liquid waste management practices (LWMPs) adopted by them and the overall impact of LWMPs on firms' economic performance.

The study uses the latest available cross-sectional data source on Indian informal firms by the National Sample Survey Office (NSSO), 73rd survey round 2015–16. First, ordered logistic regression was used to analyse the factors that impact a firm's adoption of a particular LWMP. Subsequently, to capture the heterogeneity among the firms based on productivity and size, a quantile regression (QR) was employed to analyse the impact of LWMPs on firm productivity. Additionally, the propensity score matching technique was used to address endogeneity concerns.

The authors find that bigger, urban-located and female-owned firms adopt cleaner LWMPs that positively impact their economic performance. Furthermore, the QR analysis observed that the most productive firms could extract higher returns from adopting cleaner LWMPs, indicating the relevance of the Porter–Wagner dilemma, i.e. environmental and economic sustainability are possibly symbiotic, thus having a feedback mechanism.

To the authors’ limited knowledge, this is the first study analysing the relationship between EM and FP among the informal sector firms, which are away from any regulations or obligations. Since sustainability is a two-way process, policies should be devised that incentivise sustainable business practices.

The COVID-19 pandemic has led to major sales strategy and process changes as many interactions migrated from face-to-face to virtual environments. The nature of the interactions changed, and sales firms, the sales function and salespeople created new processes to excel in virtual environments. As sales processes evolve further, this paper aims to focus on understanding the enduring shifts in sales strategy and processes. In addition, this study seeks to understand the characteristics of enduring shifts and how they are distinct from temporary shifts.

This qualitative analysis provides a comprehensive overview of the sales organizations and salespeople over the period from the start of the pandemic to early 2022. The authors interviewed 66 sales professionals from different countries and industries to better understand the temporary and enduring shifts in sales strategy and processes, adopting ad inductive and narrative approach.

There are four major findings. First, four key themes emerged: increased digitalization, resistance to digitalization, sales process changes and sales organization transformation. Second, changes are classified as temporary, permanent and accelerated changes. Third, some proposed changes were not supported. Finally, five findings were found that were not discussed in previous literature.

This paper finds distinctive findings that offer additional valuable insights that connect to and extend existing literature. These include emerging themes, classification shifts, unsupported proposed changes and unique findings.

Marketing is all about understanding your consumers and giving them what they want. However, this process becomes more complicated in times of economic crisis and national slowdown. Consumers can become scattered and unpredictable in their behaviour, making it hard to understand what they want or need. At times like these, it is more important than ever to rely on qualitative market research to understand the views of consumers and managers. Thus, this study aims to look at the significant consumer challenges that arise during times of crisis and the marketing strategies that managers prefer to counter the crisis.

The data collected for this study involves an extensive literature review followed by personal interviews with industry experts. This study presents two separate models, indicating hierarchical relationships among consumer challenges during crisis and marketing strategies using the total interpretive structural modelling approach. Further MICMAC analysis (popularly known as cross-impact matrix multiplication) was also performed to assess each variable's driving and dependence power.

“Price sensitiveness” and “adaptive buying” result as driving factors with the highest driving and lowest dependence power, which further gives rise to other consumer behaviour challenges. Likewise, the most critical strategies are “information systems” and the formation of “crisis management teams” during a crisis. At the same time, other strategies have resulted as linkage and dependent factors and none as the autonomous factor.

This paper provides a systematic understanding of how a manager can understand the challenges consumers face during a crisis and suggests a powerful summary of strategies companies can implement to sail through a crisis.