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Although several studies have suggested that the salesforce is a major contributing factor to new product success, few studies have focused on the role of sales managers and salespeople in new product launch, particularly with respect to its relation with performance in new product selling. This article decribes the results of an empirical investigation into the determinants of new product selling performance. The results show that product newness to the firm, market volatility, resource inadequacy and behavior reward are related inversely to new product selling performance, whereas feedback provided by the sales manager, new product complexity, salesforce new product selling experience and output reward are related positively to sales performance.

The study aims to identify salespeople’s challenges while selling newly launched products in the fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) sector by examining the holistic environment in which they perform their selling tasks. Furthermore, it develops a hierarchical model mapping the interrelationships between identified challenges to explore their dependence and driving power through qualitative research techniques.

The current study is exploratory and inductive in its research design. It used focus-group discussion (FGD), semistructured interviews and thematic content analysis (TCA) to identify new-product selling challenges in the FMCG sector. The identified factors were then worked into a hierarchical model using total interpretive structural modeling (TISM) to analyze their relationship. The factors were further classified into clusters based on their driving and dependence power, with the help of the Matrice d’Impacts Croisés Multiplication Appliquée à un Classement (MICMAC) technique

The TISM and MICMAC results identified salespeople’s most critical new-product selling challenges in the FMCG sector: product innovation, product differentiation, customer perception and market turbulence. An enhanced organizational focus on these factors will ensure that salespeople get adequate input to tackle the challenges they face while selling newly launched FMCG products.

The study was confined to identifying challenges in the FMCG sector alone but offered scope for application in other sectors.

This study will help organizations to identify and close gaps in the new-product selling process, thereby improving the performance of salespeople and contributing to a new product’s success. The study findings have a bearing on various stages of product development, management and life cycle. They also highlight the need for greater synergy between an organization’s sales force and other departments.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this research is unique in identifying new-product selling challenges in the FMCG sector. It also delineates the complex Web of interrelationships between them and classifies the identified factors based on their driving and dependence on power. The research results can help in organizational decision-making and sales practices, empowering salespeople in their new-product selling tasks.

The purpose of this study is to identify crucial and new product selling challenges in the Information and Communication Technology (ICT) sector for the companies operating in Business to Business (B2B) sales setting.

This study uses qualitative techniques of focus group discussion, semi-structure interviews and thematic content analysis to explore crucial and new product selling challenges. Total interpretive structuring modeling (TISM) is used to create a hierarchy amongst the factors and interpret the relationships amongst them.

This study identifies crucial challenges for the ICT sector. The TISM framework helped in identifying variables and explained the relationship between the identified variables.

The findings may have been affected by the small size of the sample, the research was restricted to Indian market only and the result would have varied across cultures and different domains.

Companies in the ICT sector are eager to develop new products but fail to sell it. Salespeople play a crucial role in diffusing the new product in the market. Addressing the challenges faced by salespeople will improve not only the sales of the new product but also the overall the operational efficiency of the sales force.

Although several studies have suggested that sales force is the major contributing factor to new product success, few studies have focused on the role of salespeople in new product launch, particularly with respect to challenges in new product selling.

This is the first study to identify new product selling challenges in the ICT sector.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the performance of salespeople when selling new products (namely, electronic goods) in a business-to-business context by incorporating the organizations’ perceived psychological climate into goal orientation theory.

The current study uses the goal orientation theory to examine the performance of 158 salespeople based on new electronic product sales. Organizational psychological climate perceptions (i.e. customer orientation, sales supportiveness and sales innovativeness) are included as variables that can moderate salespeople’s performance. This study used partial least squares to examine its proposed model.

This study found that the learning goal orientation and the performance-prove goal orientation positively affect salespeople’s self-efficacy to sell new products, whereas a performance-avoid goal orientation negatively affects efficacy. In addition, new product selling self-efficacy itself has a positive influence on new product sales performance. As for the moderator, sales supportiveness and customer orientation have the ability to moderate the relationship between self-efficacy and performance.

This study has implications for sales managers or product managers who are responsible for promoting new products. First, this study’s findings suggest that managers should consider employing performance-prove goal-oriented staff and learning goal oriented staff to sell new products. Second, management can attempt to develop a more supportive climate for the sales team, such as assisting the team in obtaining needed resources from other departments. Finally, management needs to let salespeople know that they are doing their best to understand what new products existing and potential customers will need in the near future.

This current research is one of the first to examine how the perceived psychological climates of organizations (i.e. sales supportiveness, sales innovativeness and customer orientation) may moderate salespeople’s performance when selling new products. Second, this research examines how different types of goal orientation affect salespeople’s self-efficacy when selling new products. Previous results have not always been consistent regarding the influence of a performance-prove goal orientation. Last but not least, this study tests how new product selling self-efficacy mediates the relationships between goal orientations and new product sales performance as scholars have suggested that more research into the mediating role of self-efficacy is needed.

To ensure diffusion of new products among buyers’ firms need to ensure their acceptance by the salesforce. Few studies have, however, examined the satisfaction and performance of the salesforce in new product selling. This article reports the results of an empirical study of the effect of salesperson’s effort in new product selling on satisfaction and performance, and the potential moderators of the linkages. The results suggest that effort leads to greater satisfaction and performance. However, the strength of the relationship with respect to satisfaction is decreased by perceived self advantage in selling the new product and salesperson’s experience, but enhanced by customer role ambiguity and competitive intensity. With respect to performance, the findings indicate that the positive effects of effort are buffered by intensity of market competition and salesperson’s experience.

The purpose of this study is to explore the interplay between the selection of selling formats of remanufactured products for a third-party remanufacturer (TPR) and the quality decision of an original equipment manufacturer (OEM).

This study considers a remanufacturing supply chain, where the OEM sells new products through a platform retailer, but the products remanufactured by the TPR can be sold via a direct or indirect channel. The authors model a Stackelberg game and explore the optimal quality decision of the OEM and selling format choice of the TPR.

The OEM's optimal decision depends mainly on consumers' discounted utility coefficient and cost-scale factor of remanufactured products. A higher consumers' valuation of the remanufactured product will not result in a higher retail price, but may lead to an increase in new product's sales. Given the cost-scale factor, the TPR prefers to sell directly no matter what the value of consumers' discounted utility coefficient is. An all-win situation is achieved with selling directly when consumers' discounted utility coefficient is sufficiently large.

These results provide some support to the operational strategies of the OEM and TPR.

This study firstly endogenizes the quality decision and combines the selling format selection of the TPR and the quality decision of the OEM to explore the interplay between these two important decisions.

An updated version of the original (1985) text, the book covers all aspects of marketing and selling bank services: the role of marketing; behaviour of customers; intelligence, planning and organisation; product decisions; promotion decisions; place decisions; price decisions; achieving sales. Application questions help to focus the readers' minds on key issues affecting practice.

This paper aims to study the impact of manufacturer’s upgrading strategy of durable products on the retailer’s decision on trade-in program and her decision on the secondary market.

This paper develops a channel that consists of a manufacturer and a retailer, where the manufacturer releases an upgraded product, and the retailer introduces a trade-in program for consumers, simultaneously, decides whether to enter the secondary market. These approaches are modeled through Stackelberg game.

This paper reveals that the optimal conditions for manufacturer to release upgraded products and retailer to resell used products in the secondary market, and it reveals that under what conditions it is profitable for retailer to enter the secondary market under product upgrade levels.

If the manufacturer’s upgrade level is low, it is profitable for the retailer to enter the secondary market. However, if the manufacturer’s upgrade level is high, it is unprofitable for the retailer to enter the secondary market.

In this paper, the active secondary market, upgrading of new products, consumer market segmentation and especially, the upgrade degree of new products as a function of consumer demand are considered simultaneously.

The essential investments in new product development (NPD) made by industrial companies entail effective management of NPD activities. In this context, performance measurement is one of the means that can be employed in the pursuit of effectiveness.

The purpose of this paper is twofold: detecting, describing and providing a detailed understanding on the essence of buyer responses on the channel capability in deciding new product purchase; and describing the effectiveness of new product innovation related to the channel capability. The new product innovation intended here is an outcome of the brand strategy created by the fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) manufacturer.

This research applies qualitative method and uses grounded theory approach and pragmatism interpretation, which are focused on FMCG. The approach chosen in research is grounded theory and pragmatism, parallel to the previous phenomenology and constructivism approach; therefore, the main data for this study use transcript records of the results of in-depth interviews in the field of study.

The research showed the following results: the channel capability aspects (warehouse space, shelf space and customer coverage) are the essence of buyers’ responses; construction of business buyer behavior and economic mechanism; the effectiveness of new product innovation; and channel capabilities of selling products.

The results of this research have some implications: developing the concept of business buyer behavior in a new-task purchase situation; expanding the micro-economic system of trading sector; and expanding the concept of marketing mix strategy.

Some of the theoretical implications are the originality of this research paper; therefore, the constructs will be described theoretically in order to provide practical understanding in some contexts of business importance.