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We present an empirical investigation into how customers and competitors respond to merger and acquisition (M&A) activity, using data obtained from business-to-business customers of logistics industry acquisitions. We draw on the M&A and marketing literatures to develop a set of hypotheses about how customer loyalty may be affected by a supplier's involvement in an acquisition, including the influence of competitors reactions. Our data confirm that customers purchase behaviours can be affected by M&A activity, both positively and negatively, and we find support for a causal chain whereby post-acquisition integration actions cause changes in key customer relationship variables, which in turn drive changes in customer loyalty. Our results also provide empirical evidence of the significant role that competitors responses can play in reducing customer loyalty following an acquisition. We identify a number of factors that appear to influence the magnitude of competitors reactions, namely the scale and scope of the acquisition, the form of post-acquisition integration pursued and the ‘stickiness’ of existing customers. The implications of our findings for future research, as well as for executives engaged in M&A activity, are discussed.

This study aims to test the authors’ theory that in an integrated sales team, the larger team (either from the acquiring or acquired firm) dominates the smaller team, even though it may be less competent than the smaller one, and that the level of competence of the integrated entity with the dominant but inferior larger team is bound to deteriorate.

The study tests the theory by conducting a laboratory experiment.

The results from the experiment show that an asymmetrical employee composition structure creates merger dominance in the post-integration group and influences the integration performance.

Considering the lack of mergers and acquisitions research in the marketing literature, the author believes that this study contributes new information to the literature. The finding that an integrated entity with a dominant but inferior larger partner will demonstrate a resulting degeneration of competence invites empirical research for validation.

The integration of sales teams is central to ensuring revenue growth and driving the value that mergers promise but often fail to realize. The study findings provide some practical insights in this regard.

Mergers between asymmetrical partners are common phenomena. However, few studies have investigated how an unequal size of sales teams in pre-merger firms influences the effective integration of different sales teams. To fill this research gap, this study examines whether the involvement of an unequal number of salespeople from pre-merger firms in a post-merger sales team may influence its post-merger performance.

Despite increasing interest in business model innovation (BMI), there is only limited scholarship that examines how business model (BM) innovators present and explain their innovations to various stakeholders. As BMI often involves the creation of a new ecosystem, understanding how innovators can gain support of future ecosystem members is important. Based on a longitudinal case study of Salesforce, a pioneer in cloud computing, the authors show how the innovator’s skillful framing to different audiences fosters the emergence of an ecosystem around the new BM. The authors suggest that effective framing constitutes an important strategic process that enables BM innovators to shape new ecosystems due to the performative power of words.

The purpose of this study is to examine the relevance of academic research, in terms of the topic match, to commercial practise in information technology, using the case study of a large and very rapidly growing supplier that uses leading-edge management approaches, Salesforce.com.

Academic literature review and review of commercial literature and information published by Salesforce.com.

Academics’ choice of topics matches the issues and topics present in the development of Salesforce.com, but suffers from the lack of interdisciplinary approach and particularly fails to integrate technical, marketing and financial approaches.

The case study is of only one company, though an important one, although other large companies are involved e.g. Amazon Web services. However, the approach could easily be widened to several companies.

The case study approach will help academics focus on creating more applicable research and help students to learn about companies and may also eventually help practitioners to create thought leadership.

If the financial and economic aspects of such case studies are integrated with other business aspects, these will provide a better view of the positive (or negative) contribution made by companies such as the one in the case study.

This is the first time that a case study has been examined in the context of the relevance/rigour debate.

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.

A transaction cost analysis model of the situations in which small knowledge‐intensive firms use multiple distribution channels to serve a foreign market is developed. The central argument is that integrated modes are generally preferred, as they facilitate protection of knowledge‐based assets and the provision of high levels of customer service and support. However, it is hypothesised that either plural or hybrid selling may be used, if assets can be protected in other ways, as a response to environmental diversity, when sales volumes are sufficient to support multiple channels, and in relatively mature markets, where sales growth has started to plateau. Data gathered from Canadian software developers generally support these propositions. The results help the managers of knowledge‐intensive firms to identify some of the circumstances in which multiple export channels might be deployed to enhance sales performance in a foreign market.

The purpose of this paper is to extend previous research on trust and sales control to develop and test an argument that links informational uncertainty to the development of managerial trust in the salesperson.

Hypotheses are developed suggesting that shared goals and length of attachment reduces uncertainty, which has the effect of promoting managerial trust in the salesperson. In addition, it is hypothesized that sales control will have a (negative) moderating effect on these uncertainty‐trust relationships. Data were collected from 100 sales managers to measure their: sales control strategies, degree of trust, goal congruence, and the relationship tenure with three of their salespeople. An ordinary least squares regression analysis was used to test a model of hypothesized relationships.

The results supported a direct and positive relationship between lower uncertainty (via goal congruence and relationship tenure) and managerial trust in the salesperson. Furthermore, the results confirmed that sales control had a negative moderating effect on these relationships.

These study findings are important to researchers because the literature strongly suggests that trust is critical in the relationship between sales manager and salesperson and so furthering the understanding of trust‐building strategies is an important advancement to academic sales research.

Managers can use this study to understand and recognize factors that impact trust development while avoiding the potential risks of salesperson opportunism. Examples are provided as to how practitioners can operationalize these findings to build more productive relationships with their salespeople.

An increasing number of small firms are moving into export operations. This paper reports the results of a study that examined the influence of market distance on managers’ choosing between use of in‐house expertise (integration) or external sources to obtain foreign market information. Market distance is defined as the sum of factors that affect the flow of information from and to the foreign market. Findings indicate that increased market distance leads to greater reliance on external sources (less integration) for market information.