Search results

This article evaluates the effect of technostress due to implementation of sales technologies on sales professionals in terms of changes in job satisfaction and role stress and potential mitigation strategies including technostress inhibitors and job commitment.

The study utilizes a survey data collection from sales professionals in B2B consultative roles selling to business customers from construction, industrial supply and business service firms, including items that explore before and after factors around a customer relationship management implementation.

Technostress results in a decrease in job satisfaction and an increase in role stress of sales professionals. Job commitment moderates the decrease in job satisfaction, i.e. the higher the job commitment the less significant the decrease in job satisfaction.

Sales forces need to implement technostress inhibitors to help mitigate the effects of technostress in exacerbating other sales professional stressors. These inhibitors should be contextualized to the unique situation of the sales organization.

The study examines the dark side of sales technologies. Our research expands current understanding by considering new relations among technostress-creating conditions and two work-related outcomes that are salient to sales professionals, namely role stress and job satisfaction. Further, we investigate the change in these outcomes before and after the implementation of sales technologies rather than only considering them at one point of time, after the fact.

The application service provider (ASP) industry is a fairly young entry into the IT and automatic identification and data capture industries. There are various types of ASPs: EASP (Enterprise ASP) provides enterprise‐class software and applications such as CRM (customer relationship management) and e‐procurement and B2B (business‐to‐business) exchanges; FSP (full‐service provider) provides full service systems integration and IT management services in addition to ASP service; and VASP (vertical ASP) which targets a vertical industry such as a financial services industry. Strategy experts predict that those ASP companies that will not only survive, but will thrive, are those companies that become “business solutions partners” with their customers. ASPs become such partners through enhancing a company’s value. Using Porter’s generic value chain and cost analysis concepts in the development of competitive advantage, this paper examines and models the nature of how ASPs add their own value to a company’s overall competitive strategy by reducing costs within the company’s value chain.

Firms today seek sustainable competitive advantage through their ability to provide a dynamic and unique mix of product, pricing, promotion, distribution channel, and technology. Hyper‐competitive markets bring pressure for firms to shorten product lifecycles, rapidly identify and penetrate new market segments, dramatically increase operational efficiencies, and disintermediate supply chains and distribution channels.

This paper aims to study the role of the emerging technology landscape and collaborative platforms in customer relationship management (CRM) unravelling novel opportunities for mutual co-creation in Indian banking context.

This study used the case-study method for collecting various sources for “triangulation”.

The advancement of technology has drastically increased avenues of dialogue and access and brought transparency in the relationship, offering opportunities for co-creation and increased dependence on technology in CRM. A longitudinal approach explained how bank leveraged technology in multiple aspects of CRM for enhancing relationship quality and outcome.

The study is exploratory in nature in Indian banking context, and thus it should be viewed as a preliminary step in contributing to the understanding of CRM in a new collaborative technology landscape.

This study explains the changing shape of CRM and provides relevance of customer orientation and offers insight about co-creation which has taken centre stage because of the emergence of collaborative technologies.

This study is possibly one of the first to conduct a case study to understand the way collaborative technological advancements are being exploited by organisations to develop superior CRM capability and achieve co-creation. This study analysed and comprehended the design and implementation of CRM in an Indian bank in real-life settings to gain a better understanding of the adoption of new collaborative technological advancements by a bank for customer centricity and facilitating co-creation.

This case facilitates the learning of marketing concepts like segmentation, targetting and positioning, marketing mix, branding strategies and digital marketing strategies.

The case is written based on the facts available in the public domain and hence it follows secondary data research design. The secondary sources include company websites, industry reports, newspaper articles, social media sites and other online articles and reports. The case is classroom tested with MBA students in digital marketing course and PGDM students in brand management course.

Cycle Pure agarbathi, the leading brand of NR Group, became the coveted brand among the households of India. This success amidst high competition can be attributed to the concerted effort on product development coupled with mindful branding. To keep abreast of time and competition the company opted to go digital with an e-portal. Cycle Pure had a digital presence much earlier through social media, but the e-portal www.cycle.in, was a novel attempt. All the fragrance products of the brand were available for consumers through www.cycle.in. Moreover, the product assortment consisted of a collection of top-quality products and auxiliaries linked to multiple categories such as invocation necessities, personal care, air care and lifestyle. Furthermore, using in-house fragrance research lab, the company experimented with local aromas through numerous variants and also extended to related products such as sambrani (benzene) and dhoops. With consistent product augmentations along with access to innovative sectors such as air fresheners, the company expected to grow at a rate of 15%–16% annually. However, the company targeted to grab one-third share in the total market within the next five years.

This case can be used in Marketing Management, Brand Management, Digital marketing and Strategic Marketing courses at the Master’s level. It is suitable for MBA and executive MBA students.

A 42‐question survey on usage and beliefs regarding sales force automation (SFA) was collected, along with actual sales performance data, on 1,641 sales representatives of a large international pharmaceutical company in Germany, England, and the United States. The relationships between beliefs and usage and individual sales performance were examined both within and across countries and a cost‐benefit analysis completed. Factor analysis identified five usage groupings including: Planning and territory management; Administration and external information exchange; Within company communication; Active sales tool; and Passive sales tool. Significant usage, belief, and performance differences between countries were found, with the use of SFA explaining 16.4 per cent of the variance in sales performance across countries. General findings indicated that management and representatives believed SFA to be useful. US$22.2 million in sales increases were found to be attributable to SFA usage. At the same time, non‐discounted cash flow payback periods were found to range from 6.2 to 7.4 years. Potential contributing factors and implications are discussed.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the barriers associated with the adoption and use of mobile sales force automation (SFA) systems from a salesperson’s perspective.

A qualitative investigation of two business-to-business companies was conducted. Data collected from ten semi-structured interviews with directors or sales managers were analyzed to understand the main barriers to SFA system adoption.

The study confirms the existence of three barriers (customer knowledge, quality of information and the characteristics of mobile devices) to a mobile SFA system use and identifies two additional barriers: lack of time and optimization issues.

The explorative nature of the study and the qualitative method employed limit the generalizability of the results. The propositions could be further validated and tested with a wider population.

Organizations wishing to speed the adoption of a mobile SFA system should evaluate the importance and significance of the five identified barriers to adoption, and plan how to overcome them. It is important for the providers of the mobile SFA systems to focus on developing systems that can exploit the different characteristics of each channel and, in parallel, overcome the inherent limitations of any single channel. The content of an SFA system should be customizable for each type of mobile device.

Ever increasing mobility has led to a rise in the use of smartphones and tablet PCs (tablets) in business and the consequent growth in the use of SFA systems. Although SFA systems have been studied for roughly 30 years, little is known of the impact of newly developed mobile devices on sales management and sales personnel.

The librarian and researcher have to be able to uncover specific articles in their areas of interest. This Bibliography is designed to help. Volume IV, like Volume III, contains features to help the reader to retrieve relevant literature from MCB University Press' considerable output. Each entry within has been indexed according to author(s) and the Fifth Edition of the SCIMP/SCAMP Thesaurus. The latter thus provides a full subject index to facilitate rapid retrieval. Each article or book is assigned its own unique number and this is used in both the subject and author index. This Volume indexes 29 journals indicating the depth, coverage and expansion of MCB's portfolio.

Aim of the present monograph is the economic analysis of the role of MNEs regarding globalisation and digital economy and in parallel there is a reference and examination of some legal aspects concerning MNEs, cyberspace and e‐commerce as the means of expression of the digital economy. The whole effort of the author is focused on the examination of various aspects of MNEs and their impact upon globalisation and vice versa and how and if we are moving towards a global digital economy.