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The digital transformation is dramatically changing the business-to-business (B2B) sales environment, challenging long-standing views regarding the critical competencies required of salespeople. This paper aims to explore the personal traits associated with sales performance in a digital selling environment.

Using template analysis, the researchers captured and coded over 21 h of in-depth, semi-structured interviews with senior sales leaders from various industry sectors, exploring their perceptions of the personal traits now required of B2B salespeople in the digital landscape.

The research identifies three high-level trait types critical to sales success within a digital selling environment: “analytical curiosity” – the natural motivation and ability to gather and synthesize sales-related knowledge, “empathetic citizenship” – the ability to establish initial rapport while building long-term trust and “disciplined drive” – the exertion of selling effort in a highly focused and methodical manner across all stages of the sales process.

The present data came from interviews with sales leaders in Canada. A more global sample may lead to additional insights. Moreover, the sample was drawn from long-cycle B2B sales environments; conclusions may differ for short-cycle or business-to-consumer markets.

This paper presents a framework for hiring and developing salespeople in the digital sales environment, identifying personal trait types that sales leaders should look for when hiring: analytical curiosity, empathetic citizenship and disciplined drive. The paper identifies how these trait types influence sales success, suggesting that sales leaders could coach and educate their teams to make the best use of them.

This paper presents a conceptual framework for hiring in the digital sales environment and introduces the trait of analytical curiosity not previously discussed in the literature.

There has been a lot of research on how to set marketing budgets, but the overlooked aspect was how allocating funds influences business performance in a multi-goal context. This study aims to examine the relationship between business performance, the process of allocating funds to multiple goals and the interaction among the goals.

Ratio data were generated through “a constant sum scale” from a sample of 362 managers from the B2C sector, besides data on after-tax revenue for two years. The data file was created. Then, a factor analysis was performed on the data. Furthermore, an econometric model with interaction terms was fitted to the data.

The results show that allocating funds to multiple marketing goals – demand generation, customer experience, brand image, marketing competency and purchase intention – influences business performance. Furthermore, a goal’s impact on business performance is higher when coupled with other goals than in isolation.

The findings of the study should assist managers in increasing revenue while spending less on marketing and shifting funds from less efficient goals and pairs of goals to highly efficient ones.

By extending the relevant theory on the relationship between the process of marketing fund allocation, multiple goals and business performance, this study contributes to the literature on marketing.

Smartphone apps collect users' personal information, which triggers privacy concerns for app users. Consequently, app users restrict apps from accessing their personal information. This may impact the effectiveness of in-app advertising. However, research has not yet demonstrated what factors impact app users' decisions to use apps with restricted permissions. This study is aimed to bridge this gap.

Using a quantitative research method, the authors collected the data from 384 app users via a structured questionnaire. The data were analysed using AMOS and fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA).

The findings suggest privacy concerns and risks have a significant positive effect on app usage with restricted permissions, whilst reputation, trust and perceived benefits have significant negative impact on it. Some app-related factors, such as the number of apps installed and type of apps, also impact app usage with restricted permissions.

Based on the findings, the authors provided several implications for app stores, app developers and app marketers.

This study examines the factors that influence smartphone users' decisions to use apps with restricted permission requests. By doing this, the authors' study contributes to the consumer behaviour literature in the context of smartphone app usage. Also, by explaining the underlying mechanisms through which the principles of communication privacy management theory operate in smartphone app context, the authors' research contributes to the communication privacy management theory.

Personal branding is a strategic tool of marketing and communication to define success in organisations. While it constitutes a conscious attempt to commodify self and audit self, it must be intentionally managed to obtain its optimum results. This study aims to illustrate how personal branding may also pose unintentional and unconscious strategic tool for women academics in academia to help them get wider visibility and increase their chances of getting into leadership positions.

We employed a case study approach and convenience sampling to select our unit of analysis. Three universities in both public and private universities in the eastern regions of Indonesia were purposefully selected, and interviews were held with 30 female leaders occupying and occupied middle and lower leadership hierarchies.

Our research shows that, despite their unintentional, unplanned and poorly designed personal branding, women have been able to advance to their current leadership positions by building their own rooms for practising their own preferred leadership values to get them visible and heard. This way is performed through a gendered networking, previous leadership experience and bureaucratic requirements. The consequence of such a practice may limit the range of visibility to getting noticed as worthy individuals for senior leadership roles. This might be one reason why women are scarcely found in senior leadership positions.

We propose that natural strategies of constructing, narrating and marketing or communicating personal branding in academia through authentic actions can also be helpful for the success of women to get to leadership roles in a smaller and ambient environment.

Listening is often considered the cornerstone of the communication process, with feedback being a crucial skill for effective management. The primary objective of this article was to investigate the relationship between managers’ listening skills and feedback skills from their subordinates’ perspectives. Moreover, it explores the mediating effect of message-sending skills and the ability to deal with interference in this relationship.

This article deployed a quantitative, descriptive research design. The authors developed and distributed a self-administered questionnaire via non-probability convenience sampling, resulting in 304 useable responses.

The results of the main direct effect test (model 1) indicate that listening is positively associated with feedback. Model 2 established that message-sending skills did not directly mediate that relationship. On the other hand, the ability to deal with interference was found to mediate the relationship. Finally, model 4 showed the multi-mediating effect of message-sending skills and the ability to deal with interference in the relationship between listening and feedback.

As far as the researchers are aware, this paper is the first of its kind to show the ability to deal with interference as a mediating factor in a statistical model. Moreover, this study is the first to present a continuous intermediary role played by message-sending skills and the ability to deal with interference in the relationship between listening and feedback.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the unexplored part of the historical evolution of travel agencies in Spain, from the end of the 20th century to the 21st century. When examining promotion strategies, the study focuses on the change in marketing and public relations strategies based on the incorporation of information and communication technologies and, in particular, the use of the internet.

This study draws on a qualitative analysis of the different strategies used by traditional agencies and online agencies in Spain from the mid-19th century to the present. This analysis shows how traditional communication strategies survived at the beginning of the 21st century, together with other more innovative ones, while some disappeared, being eliminated by the new online travel agencies, which created a particular conception of marketing and communication. This paper is divided into the following parts: the introduction; the beginnings of travel agency promotion in the 20th century; the evolution of promotion in travel agencies since the late 20th century; communication innovation at the beginning of the 21st century; online travel agencies; and conclusions.

This study shows that although online agencies did not manage to position themselves with a large turnover, they generated advantages and sharpened their imagination to create a new, more economical advertising model, eliminating the costs of public relations and advertising campaigns. In addition, they allowed clients to have greater independence when making their reservations, while enabling them to monitor the tastes of potential and real clients and add blogs so that consumers could express their degree of satisfaction with the product or services provided by the agency.

The focus of attention is the travel agency sector in Spain and, more specifically, communication. Studies on travel agencies and their marketing have been very scarce and partial, impeding professionals in the tourism sector from having a broad vision to direct their promotional and public relations actions. The originality of this article lies in its making a comparison between two different visions of tourism marketing and, specifically, of travel agencies, that is, the traditional vision and the innovative one. It thus helps all professionals in the sector to value and improve their marketing and communication strategies.

The authors argue that privacy is integral to the well-being of consumers and an essential component in not only corporate social responsibility (CSR) but what they term uniquely as social media responsibility (SMR). A conceptual framework is proposed that delineates the privacy issues companies should pay attention to in artificial intelligence (AI)-fueled social media environments.

The authors review literature on privacy issues in social media and AI in the academic and practitioner literatures. Based on the review, arguments focus on the need for an SMR framework, proposing responsible use of consumer data that is attentive to consumers' privacy concerns.

Implications from the framework are a path forward for social media companies to treat consumer data more fairly in this new environment. The framework has implications for companies to reduce potential harms to consumers and consider addressing their power and responsibility. With social media and AI transforming consumer behavior so profoundly, there are a variety of short- and long-term social implications.

Since AI tools are becoming integral to social media company activities, this research addresses the changing responsibilities social media companies have in securing consumers' data and enabling consumers the agency to protect their privacy effectively. The authors propose an SMR framework based on CSR research and AI tools employed by social media companies.

This study explores the mediating effects of relationship marketing orientation (RMO) and service quality orientation (SQO) on market orientation, selling orientation, and policyholder retention in non-life insurance services. Additionally, it offers important recommendations for non-life insurers in Taiwan for policy development and improving policyholder retention.

Data were collected from a sample of policyholders belonging to the top five non-life insurance companies in Taiwan. The data were then analyzed with structural equation modeling.

RMO and SQO mediate the effects of the salesperson’s market orientation on policyholder retention. Thus, RMO and SQO are key factors influencing policyholder retention. Consequently, high levels of market orientation should be maintained to increase RMO and SQO, strengthening the retention rate of non-life insurance policyholders.

The main limitation of this study is its cross-sectional nature. In the future, researchers should collect data from other countries and service industries (e.g. banks, securities, and other financial institutions), expand to different insurance contexts (e.g. life insurance), and conduct longitudinal studies or experimental research.

The results of this study can act as a guide for providers of non-life insurance services. Based on the research results, we recommend decision-makers pay increased attention to increasing policyholder retention rates by strengthening their firm’s RMO and SQO.

Few studies have investigated the relationships among market orientation, selling orientation, RMO, SQO, and policyholder retention in non-life insurance services within Asian contexts in general and specifically in Taiwan. Thus, this study’s theoretical contributions, managerial implications (especially for decision-makers), and the proposed future research directions represent timely and valuable additions to the literature.

This paper aims to clarify the effect of discount discrepancy (DD) on consumers’ purchase intention (PI). The authors propose, test and provide evidence and explanations about the moderation of justification in the relation between consumers’ perceived DD and PI.

The authors conducted three experimental studies with a 2 × 2 factorial design, focusing on consumers’ processing of price discounts. Participants were informed that this study aimed to gather opinions on fashion, clothing and retail sales promotions. They accessed the questionnaire via Qualtrics. Each participant took part in only one study. The experimental conditions were manipulated through scenarios.

Study 1 tested and supported the moderation of justification on the effect of DD on PI. Study 2 tested and supported the moderation of the type of justification for the effect of DD on PI. Study 3 confirmed the findings in Study 2 and revealed the more effective type of justification.

The authors focused on a typically hedonic product category (fashion clothing). Further research should include a wider variety of goods and services, which could lead to different explanations or generalizations.

Sales promotions must refrain from generating DD between the initial price discount and the subsequent smaller discounts. Practitioners must evaluate the gains of an initial, more considerable percentage discount to attract consumers to the store and sell them other products versus the cost of losing sales because of DD. Management should recognize the importance of giving the correct justification for perceived DD, aligning the firm’s justification with the consumer’s motivation to buy the product.

The authors offer subsidies for effective consumer protection policies.

By studying the influence of justification on the effect of DD on PI, the authors propose a mechanism that would reduce the negative effect of DD on consumers’ PI.

This study aims to answer two significant questions: What are the relative consumer and firm-level effects of marketing through metaverse compared to conventional marketing endeavours? What are the current trends in utilizing the metaverse as reported in the recent literature?

This study uses a systematic literature review methodology, using a Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses flowchart to synthesize existing research. A total of 35 articles written in English were selected and analysed from two databases, Web of Science and EBSCO Host.

The findings indicate that consumer-level effects of the metaverse include consumer loyalty and brand attachment. The firm-level benefits are decentralization and cost reductions. The paper proposes a framework indicating variables that could attenuate or enhance the association between immersive components of the metaverse and their resultant effects.

This study contributes to understanding the role of metaverse in marketing practices related to the marketing mix components. The study conceptualizes a novel framework for the metaverse and its resultant effects.