Customer entertainment is any activity considered to provide entertainment, amusement, or recreation. Businessto-business firms, as part of their sales strategy, have entertained customers for decades in hopes of influencing purchasing and building long-term relationships. Using social exchange theory and the element of reciprocity, this study examines how customer entertainment influences buyers' perceptions of gratitude, indebtedness, and purchase intention within their relationship with the B2B seller. In order to assess the importance and strategic role of customer entertainment in building and strengthening buyer-seller relationships, this study investigates customer entertainment throughout the sequential relationship stages of exploration, expansion, and commitment. A multimethod research design was developed comprised of 2 qualitative studies, 3 pretests, and a conclusive experimental field study that compared buyer attitudes with salespeople's perceptions of buyer attitudes. The final study contrasts results between 248 buyers and 245 salespeople and consists of a 3 x 3 experimental field study, with the levels of customer entertainment events and stage of relationship as manipulating variables. The analysis reveals that salespeople and buyers view of reciprocity differs, with salespeople being more socially oriented and focused on gratitude while buyers are more economically oriented and more attuned to indebtedness.

Salespeople have long been considered unique employees. They tend to work apart from each other and experience little daily contact with supervisors and other organizational employees. Additionally, salespeople interact with customers in an increasingly complex and multifunctional environment. This provides numerous opportunities for unethical behavior which has been chronicled in the popular press as well as academic research. Much of the research in sales ethics has relied on conceptual foundations which focus on individual and organizational influencers on ethical decision making. While significant, contributors to this research suggest that alternative theoretical perspectives and methods of investigation should be utilized and call for more research on the status of professional selling as a whole. We answer this call by exploring an alternative and complementary perspective based on the theory of occupational choice, social learning, and work groups to gain insight on how the sales profession evolves as its own subculture that extends beyond individual and organizational boundaries. First, we discuss the characteristics of the sales profession and empirically examine the relationship between typical individual and organizational factors and sales professionals’ perceptions of ethical behavior. Second, we offer a theoretical explanation that our findings may be due to how salespeople choose and are socialized into the subculture of the sales profession. Third, we examine this theoretical perspective via qualitative in-depth interviews with experienced sales professionals. Results and implications are discussed in terms of a sales profession code of ethics and future research directions.

Purpose – This paper aims to understand an emerging paradigm for business-to-business selling, Sales 2.0, which connects various enabling technologies within leading sales processes to drive improved business and relational outcomes. In the context of Sales 2.0, this paper addresses the need for buyer–seller dyadic sales research in the literature and highlights the importance of understanding buyer and seller perspectives regarding technology expectations and relationship-building performance. Design/methodology/approach – This research utilizes a dyadic (salesperson–customer) data collection methodology, involving 74 matched salesperson and customer responses (37 dyads) to an online survey. Existing salesperson (self-report) measures of customer technology expectations and relationship-building performance with customers were utilized and adapted to provide dyadic measures to test for buyer–seller perceptual differences. Findings – The dyadic data analysis supports the presence of significant perceptual differences between the salesperson and their customer, respective of customer technology expectations and relationship-building performance measures. In particular, the analysis reveals bidirectional perceptual differences for the two measures, whereas the salesperson underestimates the importance of their customer’s technology expectations, but overestimates their relational performance relative to their customers. Originality/value – As technology continues to transform salesperson interactions with customers, the value of capturing a deeper understanding about those interactions increases. This study uses matched salesperson–customer dyads from a health-care sales organization to provide researchers and practitioners with insightful findings with respect to buyer–seller interactions and perceptual differences. Further, the research uniquely advances dyadic measures of customer technology expectations and relationship-building performance with customers to advance sales research in the context of Sales 2.0.

The authors use the theory of organizing framework for sales research to demonstrate that customer organizational citizenship behavior (COCB) is a meaningful and useful customer segmentation criterion. First, they discern from open-ended responses what salespeople mean by best, typical, and worst customers. They then empirically demonstrate the differential influence of COCB by customer type on salespeople's evaluations of their customers and on three aspects of sales performancecustomer-involved sales performance, salesperson behavioral effectiveness, and salesperson outcome productivity. The three customer-type comparison reveals that the COCB of best and typical customers has a positive influence on all three aspects of sales performance while the COCB of worst customers has a negative influence on them. These findings have implications for customer evaluation, customer segmentation, salesperson evaluation, and sales training.

Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to conduct an exploratory study of potential business-to-business (B2B) customers that includes an empirical analysis that investigate the effect that customer entertainment has on customer suspicion toward the salesperson, and how those negative attitudes are influenced by the relationship stage and the perceived cost of the event.Design/methodology/approach - Using an experimental design, data were collected from 105 potential customers working in a B2B environment that assessed their attitudes regarding offers of varying levels of customer entertainment across differing stages of the relationship.Findings - Results demonstrate that B2B customers have important perceptions regarding the perceived cost of customer entertainment offers by salespeople. Those evaluations resulted in a positive relationship between customer attitudes of suspicion toward the salesperson and the perceived cost of the entertainment event. However, the stage of the relationship tended to ameliorate suspicious attitudes of customers, although not in a completely symmetrical manner.Research limitations/implications - Additional testing with larger sample populations would better solidify the existence of the relationships.Practical implications - This study provides a framework for practitioners that gives direction to the strategic use of customer entertainment such that it acts as a relationship catalyst, and not a relationship poison.Originality/value - The paper uses a customer perspective to fill a need to better understand the instrumental role of customer entertainment in relationship marketing, and how it interacts with the perceived cost of the event and relationship stage to create differing customer attitudes.

The authors are attempting to explore the relationship between organization of attributes within an advertisement and the ability to recall the advertisement. The study applies memory theory to marketing with an experimental design manipulating the number of categories or chunks in the organization of an advertisement. Results confirm the earlier list learning experiments in the organization and memory literature.

By conceptualizing customers' organizational citizenship behavior as a communication cue, a customer evaluation criterion, and a sales performance facilitator in a relational selling context, the authors empirically demonstrate the effect of salespeople's perceptions of their customers' voluntary, prosocial behavior on three components of sales performance. The authors first hypothesize and confirm that salespeople can perceive their customers to exhibit organizational citizenship behavior, and that this important customer cue can serve as a customer evaluation criterion. The authors then demonstrate how salespeople can respond to their perceptions of customers' organizational citizenship behavior in performance-enhancing ways. Results from a sample of 628 business-to-business salespeople suggest that customer-involved sales performance fully mediates the relationship between customers' organizational citizenship behavior and salesperson behavioral performance, and that salesperson behavioral performance partially mediates the relationship between customer-involved sales performance and salesperson outcome productivity. These findings highlight the important role customer-involved sales performance plays as an antecedent to a salesperson's individual performance. Support for the notion that salespeople's perceptions and interpretations of their customers' organizational citizenship behavior can facilitate personal selling and augment sales performance has implications for sales training, salesperson evaluation, and customer evaluation. The authors discuss these and other implications for B2B researchers and practitioners.

This study focuses on differences in preference and usage behavior toward various banking methods between male and female consumers of retail banking services. It is based on survey data drawn from customers of a large commericial bank in a major metropolitan city in the southeastern United States. The findings indicate significant differences in preference patterns between the sexes, but fails to show significant differences in usage patterns. The study also shows differences within each sex between preferred banking Diethods and actual use patterns. Differences may be explained in terms of lifestyles and/or situation-specific behavior.

This study introduces the concept of perceived salesperson transparency to the sales literature. It addresses how recent technological developments impact traditional agency theory concerns, while simultaneously creating a conceptual definition of perceived transparency for application on an individual level. Salesperson perceptions regarding managerial use of behavioral information obtained through technological means are empirically found to have a mediating effect on the relationship between managerial access to such information and the likelihood of unethical salesperson behavior. It concludes that salesperson ethical behavior is not influenced by management's ability to obtain behaviorally relevant information, but rather by the use of this information. Further, it is found that the mediating influence of use of information accessed via technology is itself moderated by the salesperson's job performance.

Undergraduate sales education is somewhat unique in that it prepares students for a career which functions mostly outside of traditional corporate management structures. Concurrently, the demand for well-qualified salespeople has intensified partly due to high turnover. This article contends that there may be a disconnection between student expectations of a sales job when they leave school and what they actually experience on the job. Using salesforce socialization as a theoretical foundation, this study compares students' versus salespeople's perceptions of sales jobs in terms of realism and congruence with outcome and behavior-based job performance indicators as well as perceived ethical control. When considering job performance and ethics, the results show that students have a highly idealistic perception of sales when compared to those in the actual field of sales. For marketing educators it is imperative that efforts are focused on helping students form more realistic expectations for a sales career. Such efforts and suggestions are provided in the implications.

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to introduce the concept of salesperson coachability and to propose potential relationships between it and sales coaching and sales performance. Design/methodology/approach This conceptual paper reviews the sales coaching and sales performance literature to highlight how the knowledge of each may be enhanced by the coachability construct. The concept of athletic coachability is then introduced to explain why it should be adapted and applied to salespeople in a personal selling context. Findings Adapting and applying the concept of athlete coachability to salespeople in a personal selling context may provide sales management practitioners and academics a better understanding of how certain salesperson personality traits combine and interact with certain situational influences to impact sales performance. Research limitations/implications Future studies need to test the propositions advanced. Practical implications Salesperson coachability may be used by sales managers as a screening criterion for sales force recruiting and retention. Social implications Salesperson coachability assessments for recruiting and training may result in lowering job turnover. Originality/value This paper introduces the concept of athletic coachability to the sales literature, argues why the concept should be adapted and applied to salespeople in a personal selling context, and advances testable propositions with respect to its expected relationship with sales coaching and sales performance.

A large body of pedagogical research exists on developing curricula and ethics training tools to prepare college graduates for entering the workforce. However, many college students are already in the workforce while they attend school. Many of these jobs are entry-level or frontline employee positions in retail or service industries, which can be ripe opportunities for ethical misconduct. However, most research on ethics and employees has focused on upper-level managers and CEOs. Although insightful, ethics scholars contend that there are more low-level employees who face ethical dilemmas on a daily basis. Given the increase of working students and the paucity of research on entry-level job ethics, this study investigates, categorizes, and analyzes ethical dilemmas faced by college students who work while attending school. This article considers ethical decision-making models and corporate ethical values as its conceptual base. A qualitative approach for this study was taken due to the scarcity of research on ethical issues faced by entry-level employees and the call by ethics researchers for qualitative research to explore the complex and psychosocially embedded nature of business ethics. The implications of the emergent ethical issues and values from this study are then discussed for marketing educators.

In this two-part empirical study, a measure of athletic coachability is adapted and applied to salespeople in a business-to-business sales context. Relationships among salesperson coachability, salesperson trait competitiveness, sales manager leadership style, and sales performance are conceptualized and tested. Results suggest that sales performance is highest when salespeople are highly coachable, highly competitive, and under transformational leadership. Results also suggest that salesperson coachability fully mediates the relationship between transformational leadership and sales performance and partially mediates the relationship between salesperson trait competitiveness and sales performance.

A large body of pedagogical research exists on developing curricula and ethics training tools to prepare college graduates for entering the workforce. However, many college students are already in the workforce while they attend school. Many of these jobs are entry-level or frontline employee positions in retail or service industries, which can be ripe opportunities for ethical misconduct. However, most research on ethics and employees has focused on upper-level managers and CEOs. Although insightful, ethics scholars contend that there are more low-level employees who face ethical dilemmas on a daily basis. Given the increase of working students and the paucity of research on entry-level job ethics, this study investigates, categorizes, and analyzes ethical dilemmas faced by college students who work while attending school. This article considers ethical decision-making models and corporate ethical values as its conceptual base. A qualitative approach for this study was taken due to the scarcity of research on ethical issues faced by entry-level employees and the call by ethics researchers for qualitative research to explore the complex and psychosocially embedded nature of business ethics. The implications of the emergent ethical issues and values from this study are then discussed for marketing educators.

The authors explore salesforce socialization tactics as a means of building organizational value congruence—an important dimension of salesforce culture strength. An empirical study is presented in which six socialization tactics are measured and it is found that certain socialization tactics have a greater effect than others on organizational value congruence. The findings have important implications for salesforce managers and suggest future research direction.

Much has been written recently in the area of professional services marketing. The research in this area, however, tends to be survey research, centering on one professional group—typically in print media. Little, if any, research has compared the effects of television advertising across various professions. This paper draws from the source credibility literature and presents the results of an experiment which assesses the effects a manipulation of both a spokesperson and profession has on the perceived credibility of doctors, lawyers, dentists, and chiropractors. The results suggest that not all professional groups should use the same method of execution in their TV advertisements. TV ads for professional service groups should be based on profession-specific criteria.

Building durable buyer–seller relationships is commonly accepted as a foundation for successful business-to-business selling. As a result, the literature is replete with research that addresses various dimensions of how business executives and salespeople develop interpersonal relationships, create affective commitment, and generate customer loyalty. However, the role of customer entertainment in this dyadic interaction remains largely unexamined. The purpose of this conceptual paper is to provide a comprehensive assessment of the current knowledge regarding the use of customer entertainment and how it is perceived by both the buyer and the seller and to provide insights for future research in relationship marketing. KEYWORDS: ethicscustomer entertainmentpersonal sellingrelationship marketingsales management