Fear of missing out (FOMO) is an emerging topic in consumer psychology. However, the theoretical foundations of FOMO are underdeveloped and extant FOMO scales confine the construct to the context of social media. Without a theoretical foundation and a new FOMO scale, the future development of research on this promising phenomenon is limited. This article provides a new conceptualization of FOMO and a new FOMO scale. Using self-concept theory, the authors propose that FOMO is an emotional response to perceived psychological threats to one's self-concept. Because the self-concept involves a private and a public self, FOMO involves two dimensions: a personal FOMO and a social FOMO. Accordingly, a new scale was developed. The results of four studies support the validity and reliability of the two-dimensional scale. This new conceptualization and scale will enable consumer researchers to examine FOMO in a broader set of contexts, test the relationship between FOMO and related constructs, and develop a nomological network around the construct.

A well-established influencer of salesperson job performance that has not received as much attention over the years is job insecurity. Given the technological revolution that has been occurring in the field of professional selling for several decades, requiring salespeople to become more technologically proficient than their predecessors ever had to be, job insecurity regarding this unique aspect of professional selling is exceedingly overdue for academic inquiry. Job insecurity as an influencer of job performance has not received as much academic research attention as its counterparts. Chaker et al. (2016: 344) unambiguously declare that “salesperson insecurity has been largely neglected in the literature.” Ahearne et al.’s (2004) study on the impact of customer relationship management (CRM) technology on sales performance showed technology has an observable “disabling effect” on sales performance. Recognizing that the relationship between technology and sales performance is dependent on the salesperson’s level of ability, their study calls for further research “into the differing relationships between different expertise classes of users,” and into technological proficiency’s moderating effect on sales performance, yet not on the its possible effect on salesperson job insecurity. Johnson and Bharadwaj (2005) reported that firms were developing, “web sites designed to provide information and conduct transactions with customers, replacing many routine sales force activities…heightening job insecurity concerns” (p. 3). More than a decade later, their portentous observation demands further investigation. This study will investigate if technological self-efficacy creates a less insecure salesperson among newer salespeople compared to more experienced and established salespeople who learned how to sell without digital supplementation. This current study strives to help remedy this overlooked enigmatic gap in the existing literature of professional sales. It will not only contribute to the body of theoretical scholarship in this field but will additionally provide sales managers and practitioners with new and relevant information, which can aid in improving the performances of both new and established sales force members.

The challenges faced by organizations trying to adopt and implement new technologies within their sales forces continue to grow, despite the widespread attention given to them by academics and practitioners. Increasingly sophisticated advances in hardware and software are creating unprecedented expectations and requirements for not only current salespeople but future selling professionals, too. This paper suggests current university-based sales programs may not be supplying their students with the applicable knowledge and skill sets related to sales technology they will need not only for their success but their employers’ success as well. The goal of this exploratory study was to identify how undergraduate students define sales and selling and to determine the positive and negative connotations associated with these terms among college students and their perceptions of technology in the sales profession. An online survey was created and distributed to a convenience sample of undergraduate students at universities located in the southeast and southwest United States for this purpose. As the growth in opportunities in the sales profession is expected to increase, it is important for universities to understand how undergraduates view the sales profession as well as the need for technology in sales careers. Students perceive a strong need to understand current technologies associated with the sales profession. However, an initial review of existing sales programs in the United States indicates that such technologies may not be part of the curriculum.

Since 1991, business schools in the US and Europe that are affiliated with AACSB have been urged to employ a mission-driven philosophy and approach into their programs. An annual Business School Questionnaire (BSQ) is conducted and shared among members to provide characteristics related to their school and its program, including what priorities are emphasized with regards to both their mission’s general (teaching, research, and service) and scholarly (discipline-based, contribution-to practice, or pedagogy) orientations. The BSQ results are encouraged to be used for benchmarking. This study conducted an analysis of the self-categorizations to determine the extent of diversity among school mission orientation. The results indicate more conformity than diversity. The authors attribute the lack of variance to the established practice of benchmarking.

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.

This study examines how Technology Orientation (TO) and Customer Orientation (CO) with organizational characteristics e.g. firm size and culture collectively impact firm performance. A sample of 158 Chinese firms were clustered of the basis of their mix of Technology Orientation (TO) and Customer Orientation (CO). The paper provides evidence that firms combining several strategic orientations such as (TO) and (CO) perform better. The second key finding is that organizational characteristics e.g. firm size and collectivism have a positive influence on firm performance while power distance and risk taking have a negative influence on firm performance. Implications of the findings are discussed.

The objective of green marketing campaigns is to influence consumer behavior by communicating the benefits of engaging in environmentally responsible behavior (ERB), such as recycling, conserving energy, purchasing locally or regionally grown/raised food, etc. Marketers use a variety of communication channels to diffuse these influential messages to their target segments. These messages convey a range of individual and socially collective benefits of ERB. They commonly stress its behavioral advantages in one of two contexts: ecological or economical. Yet, an insufficient amount of research exists towards understanding if one (or either) context is more influential in increasing the likelihood of consumers’ willingness to engage in this increasingly essential social behavior. The findings of this study suggest that although communications rooted in a context presenting the economic upside of environmentally responsible behavior have a greater influence on consumers’ likelihood to recycle, environmentally themed messages were seen as being more honest

The selling process with its various antecedents and consequences is a common focus of research. Emotion-based conditions such as exhaustion and burnout are receiving growing attention due to their tremendous impact on salesperson behavior and performance. Yet, no research currently exists into the physical effects that salespeople are at risk for due to the demanding and isolated nature of their jobs. Such health consequences could subsequently have exceedingly negative organizational drawbacks. Given the importance of Sales to most businesses, a better understanding of these substantial threats is required.

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 This exploratory research aims to examine the commonalities and differences in how buyers and sellers perceive and characterize an effective sales presentation in an attempt to present issues/themes that may help start a dialogue into the theoretical underpinnings of effective sales presentations. Design/methodology/approach The paper consists of a qualitative study involving both salespeople and buyers. Findings The study uncovers three common themes of an effective sales presentation – knowledge, adaptability, and trust – but exposes a gap between buyer and seller expectations and perspectives of these themes. Practical implications The findings provide insight for business‐to‐business (B2B) salespeople and managers as to what buyers and sellers consider characteristic of an effective sales presentation. Originality/value By focusing on how the two main parties to an exchange – the buyer and seller – define what makes an effective sales presentation, this paper adds knowledge to the area of B2B sales research.

In the past few years, 26 states have changed their constitutions to restrict marriage to one man and one woman. There has been little research on the psychological effects of this political process on gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender (GLBT) people. In this qualitative project, 13 GLBT people were interviewed about their experience during the process of a constitutional amendment. A grounded theory analysis of these semistructured interviews was conducted. The core category, or central finding, was “GLBT people need to balance the dual dangers of engagement with GLBT advocacy and self-protection through withdrawal.” Other findings focused on the experience of living in a context of painful reminders that one is seen as less than human by the government and public, and in which one’s life is frequently and publicly misrepresented to advance hostile political campaigns. Social support and a process of self-acceptance helped participants to face their fears of isolation, discrimination, and aggression and to fight for social justice.

Research surrounding celebrities has typically focused on trying to capture and understand individuals’ existing attitudes, thoughts and feelings to product endorsement, celebrity branding, and more recently the concept of celebrity worship. Typically, this research has measured these attitudes, thoughts, and feelings toward living celebrities; however, this research measured these constructs as they relate to dead celebrities. We hypothesized that: (a) the age of the celebrity at the time of their death; (b) the number of years that have passed since the celebrity’s death; and (c) the gender of the celebrity will have a stronger impact on respondents’ attitudes towards that celebrity as the similarity between the celebrity and respondent increases. Results from regression analyses suggest that for Celebrity Identification, risk is the greatest influence, followed by nostalgia-tradition and nostalgia-progress for dead celebrity worship. For Celebrity Enjoyment, nostalgia-tradition and gender had an effect on dead celebrity worship, which suggests that there may be a consistent gender effect on dead celebrity worship. Results from a discriminant analysis point to gender being the greatest influence in the selection of dead celebrities followed by age difference between the celebrity and respondent and Celebrity Enjoyment. These results provide a strong foundation into examining the attitude formation toward dead celebrities.

Research surrounding celebrities has traditionally focused on trying to capture and understand individuals' existing attitudes, thoughts and feelings toward product endorsement, celebrity branding, and more recently the concept of celebrity worship. Typically, these concepts are measured through capturing attitudes, thoughts, and feelings toward living celebrities; however, the present study measured these constructs as they relate to dead celebrities. We hypothesized that: (a) the age of the celebrity at the time of their death; (b) the number of years that have passed since the celebrity's death; and (c) the gender of the celebrity will have a stronger impact on respondents' attitudes towards that celebrity as the similarity between the celebrity and respondent increases. Results from regression analyses suggest that for the dimension of Celebrity Identification, perceived social risk is the greatest influence, followed by the conceptual dimensions of nostalgia-tradition and nostalgia-progress. For the dimension of Celebrity Enjoyment, nostalgia-tradition and gender had a significant effect on dead celebrity worship, suggesting there may be a consistent gender effect on dead celebrity worship. Results from a discriminant analysis point to gender having the greatest influence in the selection of dead celebrities followed by age difference between the celebrity and respondent and perceptions of Celebrity Enjoyment. These results provide a strong foundation for further understanding the process of attitude formation toward dead celebrities.

Much of the research in the gambling field has been about the attitudes and behaviors of patrons below the age of retirement. Grant (2006) states population studies in 1975 and 1998 of adults in the United States found adults 65 years and older had increases in lifetime gambling from 35% to 80% and in past- year gambling from 23% to 50%. With the number of elderly gamblers increasing at such a rapid rate, the need to understand the motivation behind their behaviors is important to academicians and practitioners alike. Using a sample of motor coach casino tour participants, reported social, economic and hedonic motivations are tested for their influence on motor coach casino tour behavior. Respondents were separated into two groups; those who had visited Tunica, MS casinos previously on a motor coach and first-time casino coach tour participants. Results showed that for first time visitors, hedonic, economic and social motivations were not significant predictors of gaming and coach tour behavior. However, for experienced motor coach casino tour visitors to Tunica, social motivation was a significant indicator for how many times they had gambled in the past year; economic and social motivation were significant predictors of how many times they had traveled on a motor coach in the past year; and hedonic motivation was a significant predictor of the number of times they had visited Tunica in the past year. The results suggest that differences in the motivations of tour coach gaming visitors to Tunica, MS casinos can be used to understand motor coach tour participation.