Forward-thinking retail firms (e.g., Apple, Ikea, BestBuy, Verizon) are benefiting from a new customer-facing role, the ‘Retail Business Development Specialist’ (RBDS). Empirical work on the RBDS role has yet to be undertaken in the literature, thus this initial examination of RBDS begins by positioning it as a “Retail-to-Business” (R2B) marketing role whose primary purpose is to serve high-volume customers and grow sales in ways distinct from both B2B and B2C sales positions. We initially explore the RBDS role through a qualitative field and case study (Study 1). Findings from Study 1 indicate that effective RBDS performance is likely predicated upon effectively managing the buyer exchange relationship from both a customer- (CO) and sales-oriented (SO) perspective as well as efficacious usage of various relationship management behaviors. In Study 2, we explore performance in the RBDS role through the lens of selected individual traits, salesperson behavioral orientations (SOCO), and relationship management strategies (i.e., ROC-II), testing these relationships via a field study of 211 RBDS employees. The present research contributes by offering an initial look at this new customer-facing role, while investigating specific traits and relational behaviors that drive performance.

The challenges encapsulated in the 'War for Sales Talent' are symbolic of the struggles inherent in the recruitment, nurturing, and retention of sales professionals. While extant research provides valuable insights into facets like hiring practices, selection criteria, coaching, and training strategies, a noticeable void persists in guiding salespeople as they navigate beyond the initial ramp-up period in a new role. By interconnecting survey responses from a cohort of 200 service salespeople with 18-24 months of tenure, this investigation brings to light the facets of effort-encompassing prospecting, conversion, retention, and growth-that exert an influence on the change in year-over-year revenue following a salesperson's first complete sales cycle post-onboarding. The results underscore the significance of conversion and growth efforts, revealing their robust impact on the net change in sales revenue. In challenging existing paradigms, this study proposes a conceptual shift in understanding sales effort. Rather than adhering to the prevailing unidimensional viewpoint, the findings advocate for recognizing sales effort as a multi-dimensional construct with competing demands. This nuanced perspective contributes to a more comprehensive understanding of the factors influencing revenue growth for salespeople transitioning from the ramp-up period toward a sustainable, growth-oriented trajectory.

Research suggests that most brand stakeholders react favorably to cause-related marketing (CRM), and CRM positively impacts the brand. However, a divergence of interests can create tension in the principal - agent relationship, as the owners may feel that managers are investing in CRM at the expense of maximizing profits. Along these lines, recent research suggests that shareholders negatively respond to CRM, which reduces shareholder value. Thus, there are concerns about whether expenses incurred via CRM partnerships create value for all stakeholders. Therefore, because CRM can benefit nonprofits and many of the firm's stakeholders, the authors utilize agency theory and signaling theory to explore co-branding and competitive signals that mitigate the negative impact on shareholder value. The results provide insights into how nonprofit and brand managers can navigate CRM partnerships by designing campaigns that send signals designed to alleviate investor concerns and reduce shareholder disapproval yet still garner support from other stakeholders.

PurposeThis study aims to apply the Wounded Pride/Spite model (integral emotions which occur during the donation request) and the Affect Infusion model (incidental emotions primed before encountering the checkout charity request) to check out charity to understand the interactive effects of positive and negative emotional responses. Furthermore, the moderating role of a positive or negative shopping experience is examined. Design/methodology/approachIn Study 1, 518 customers participated in an online survey using a controlled scenario describing checkout charity exchanges. In Study 2, 274 students participated in a similar online scenario but were primed with a positive or negative shopping experience. Data were analyzed through structural equation modeling using Mplus v8. FindingsCheckout charity is laden with affective experiences that simultaneously produce positive and negative emotions. Customers who are involved with charities and perceive it acceptable for companies to elicit charitable support are more likely to experience feelings of pride and joy during a point-of-sale donation request. However, negative affective responses are more complicated, as personal support of nonprofits was not enough to reduce feelings of guilt and anger during a donation request. Furthermore, in Study 2, the authors discover that as integral emotions influence customers' affective states during a checkout charity encounter, incidental emotions garnered from the customer's shopping experience serve as a moderating role in increasing positive affect and mitigating negative affect, highlighting the importance of the holistic shopping experience. Finally, in Study 2, the incongruent reaction of high positive and high negative affect was linked to decreased donation intentions, further emphasizing the importance of creating positive shopping experiences and identifying customers who perceive it to be acceptable for companies to elicit charitable support. Originality/valueTo the best of the authors' knowledge, this research is the first to apply these dual theoretical explanations to checkout charity, contributing an affective and customer-based understanding to complement prior work on marketing strategy. The findings both uphold and extend research in this area, providing novel support for the role of the customer in determining the success of checkout charity.

The tourism sector is essential to a country due to its direct and indirect impact on employment, the development of services, and foreign exchange (Berndt et al., 2013). Two important sectors for tourism are accommodations and travel, specifically the hotel and taxi industries, which are viewed in this chapter as traditional services. Building on these services, the sharing economy has impacted the transport and accommodation sectors, and thus the tourism industry (Ammar et al., 2020). Vehicles have been perceived as underutilised resources, which encourages sharing of this resource with others (Weatherhead, 2014). These resources are then used by the owners to generate income through service provision. Examples of brands in the sharing economy include Uber, Lyft, Airbnb and Vrbo.

Purpose The increasing interest of grit research in sales represents an opportunity as sales-dependent organizations stand to benefit significantly from an enhanced understanding of how grit arises and how it affects sales performance. The nature of sales, with high levels of stress and rejection, presents conditions in which individuals possessing high levels of grit should find greater success than their less gritty peers. However, three predominant issues limit the findings of previous research on grit in a sales and marketing context: scholars have elected to measure grit (1) with adolescents before personality traits are fully established, (2) in non-sales contexts, or (3) using only one of the two dimensions of grit, generally assessing perseverance but not consistency. Thus, due to differing opinions among researchers regarding the usefulness of grit's proposed subdimensions, perseverance and consistency of interests, the scant research in that has examined grit within organizational contexts presents a muddled picture of grit's potential utility for the field of sales. Therefore, this study addresses all three concerns by investigating grit in a B2B sales setting, with adult salespeople, and on both dimensions of grit.Methodology Survey data were collected from 473 B2B salespeople (i.e. employed full-time in business-to-business sales as a salesperson) representing a cross-section of industries, including advertising, auto parts, business solutions, computer and technology-related sales, insurance, promotional products, telecommunications, and transportation and logistics. The model design allowed for exploration of two antecedents to grit, growth mind-set and self-efficacy, and two outcomes of interest, salesperson performance and organizational commitment. Further, we incorporate the contingent role managers can have on the relationships between growth mind-set and self-efficacy with perseverance of effort and consistency of interest by expanding a salesperson's locus of control. All of these relationships were tested with Mplus v8, using a maximum likelihood estimator with robust standard errors.Findings Our findings build upon previous sales research examining the effects of grit on sales outcomes by demonstrating that each of grit's dimensions has a positive relationship with performance and determining that the positive effects of grit extend to salesperson commitment to the organization. Moreover, we determine that a growth mind-set and self-efficacy are predictive of salesperson grit and that locus of control plays a moderating role in these relationships. However, we demonstrate that grit's perseverance and consistency dimensions are not impacted uniformly by a growth mind-set and locus of control, indicating that additional insights may be gleaned from assessing and analyzing the grit construct using both dimensions. In particular, the results show that a salesperson's growth mind-set is positively associated with perseverance of effort and negatively associated with consistency of interest. Thus, salespeople with a growth mind-set are likely to persevere through long sales cycles but may find their interests gravitate toward new opportunities over time (e.g. sales role with another company, management opportunity). However, the negative relationship between a growth mind-set and consistency of interest is attenuated when the salesperson has a higher perceived locus of control.Implications Salespeople with a growth mind-set need to work in environments that continually provide them with new opportunities, or decreases in consistency of interest may negatively impact their performance and commitment to the organization. Thus, the candidate with the growth mind-set may be an ideal fit for select opportunities within the sales organization that would allow them to progress more quickly, such as accelerated training programs, programs offering relatively rapid progression from junior standing to full-standing, or programs that would place them on a management track. Further, taking into consideration the contingent role of locus of control, sales managers can monitor and develop a salesperson's locus of control to mitigate a decline in consistency of interest by permitting flexibility and autonomy, providing tools and feedback, and empowering the salesperson with the capabilities and opportunities they need to execute the sales process successfully.Originality This research strengthens the recent trend in grit-based research by exploring both dimensions of grit in a B2B sales setting with adult salespeople. This study also introduces research on growth and fixed mind-sets in a sales setting. Further, even with grit being increasingly studied in the sales domain, very little research had examined how grit affects sales outcomes to date. Therefore, this research delivers some of the first findings on both dimensions of grit and growth mind-sets to the sales and marketing literature by highlighting factors that can enhance salesperson performance and organizational commitment.

This manuscript examines a quality-oriented philosophy in a nonprofit context utilizing semi-structured interviews with nonprofit executive directors. The findings indicate that nonprofit organizations do seek continuous improvement and value a long-term focus, consistent with for-profit quality aspirations. However, factors unique to the structure of nonprofit organizations exist and contribute to organizational quality. The interviews converged to highlight five areas that relate to organizational quality in nonprofit organizations: donor relationships, organizational transparency, board member involvement, talent recruitment, and employee commitment. The findings indicate that a quality-oriented approach to nonprofit governance affects an organization's ability to secure funding and address the mission of the respective organization more efficiently and effectively. Thus, it is suggested that incorporating a quality-oriented philosophy creates a competitive advantage for nonprofit organizations in an increasingly saturated market.

Purpose This study aims to examine the impact of stress as a result of adverse life events on a salesperson’s ability to effectively manage customer relationships. The framework identifies burnout as a key mediating variable and salesperson grit as a coping mechanism. Design/methodology/approach Survey data is gathered from 364 B2B salespeople and investigated using structural equation modeling in Mplus 8.2. Findings The findings reveal adverse life events and their corresponding stress diminish a salesperson’s ability to manage customer relationships effectively through the mediators of reduced personal accomplishment and depersonalization. Thus, negative events of a personal nature can have a significant impact on salesperson outcomes and should be taken with the same level of seriousness as job-related stress. Furthermore, results show that salesperson grit provides mixed results as a coping mechanism. Practical implications The findings indicate that practitioners should be mindful of the negative impact adverse life events can have on work-related outcomes. Organizations and sales managers must be intentional in managing relationships with their salespeople and strategic in the structure they use to manage customer relationships. Recommendations include the use of regular one-on-one meetings to open up a dialogue about work or personal issues the salesperson is experiencing and assigning multiple resources or staff to service valuable customers, thereby not relying on solitary salespeople. Originality/value Employee well-being contributes to firm value; yet, this is the first study in sales to explore the impact of adverse life events on salesperson outcomes.

In their interactions in the business environment, consumers are placing an increased importance on the social actions with which firms are involved. Typically, research has focused on the positive benefits of corporate social responsibility (CSR) or how consumers respond to negative CSR. Negative CSR involves the presence of a transgression, usually some violation of what is generally acceptable in terms of ethics, society, and the consumer–firm relationship. It occurs when a firm engages in activities that are damaging to communities, customers, employees, and/or the natural environment. These failures are often accompanied by positive CSR declarations and activities, creating inconsistent or contradictory information (Wagner et al. 2009). However, little research exists that investigates how consumers react to contradictory CSR information and what firms can do to mitigate its effects. Therefore, this study seeks to understand the impact of contradictory CSR information on consumers and identify communication strategies firms can employ to promote their positive CSR outcomes to alleviate any negative effects from CSR failures. Drawing on research that demonstrates the influence of primacy and recency effects on the success of a firm’s CSR strategy (Wagner et al. 2009), this study explores how a consumer’s experience with the firm and the firm’s CSR reputation impact the consumer’s response to contradictory CSR information. Using a longitudinal design, this study tests the impact primacy and recency effects have in three different ethical failures. The findings show that multiple past experiences with the firm facilitates a “primacy effect” so that when negative CSR occurs, the prior positive experiences mitigate negative consequences. Moreover, a well-known and positive reputation causes a primacy effect to occur, as the strong reputation works as a signal for how the firm will behave in the future. Thus, the results suggest that firms benefit most from a proactive CSR communication strategy with their current customers and a reactive CSR communication strategy with consumers who have little to no experience with the firm (general public).

Previous research has shown that salesperson burnout affects sales productivity, employee retention, and job satisfaction. Although burnout has often been conceptualized as a multiple‐component construct, research typically has approached the efficacy of burnout reduction techniques by using overall measures of burnout rather than by examining the effects of such techniques on individual burnout components. The present research investigates how social support and choice of coping strategy relate to burnout components, illustrating the need to consider such components when conducting burnout‐related research

Sales performance is not a static event but rather a dynamic process that unfolds over time with significant investments from the salesperson into key stages of the selling process. Because of this, salespeople continue to be critical producers within their organization, leading revenue generation and retention activities (Raynor and Ahmed 2013). Managers, as organizational leaders, are faced with the dilemma of ensuring their sales force delivers on revenue goals. As a result, U.S. companies spend approximately 20 billion annually on sales training with the goal of improving performance through increasing salespersons skills and abilities (Association for Talent Development 2013). Yet approximately 50

Personal stress is a prevalent problem in a connected world. For salespeople, demands of a connected workplace have largely eliminated boundaries between personal and work life, allowing stress from personal issues to spill over into their work. Thus, problems of health, relationships, and finances are no longer "left at home" for salespeople. Rather, a less central workplace model (e.g., remote workplaces and mobile platforms) and 24/7 work expectations expand the workplace, which comingles personal and work demands. Utilizing a sample of 331 salespeople, we study personal stressors that cross boundaries into the workplace and find that they play a critical role in the formation of burnout across its dimensions, which leads to reduced salesperson performance. Our research contributes to the sales literature by investigating individual personal stressors via Job Demands and Conservation of Resources theories and offers insights for managers of salespeople that face both personal and work stress.

Drawing on the influence of primacy and recency effects in processing information about corporate social responsibility (CSR), the authors examine how internal (customer experience) and external (CSR reputation) factors impact the consumer-firm relationship in the presence of contradictory CSR information. Evaluating these factors provides a more comprehensive understanding of how consumers react to unethical and socially irresponsible actions. Contrary to recent research that suggests a reactive CSR communication strategy to be best due to recency effects, the present findings show that past customer experiences with the firm facilitate a ‘primacy effect’. Thus, when corporate social irresponsibility (CSI) occurs, a customer’s prior experiences mitigate negative consequences. Conversely, a firm’s positive CSR reputation may provide goodwill, although it does not guarantee that consumers will process CSR information differently. Therefore, firms cannot build a strong CSR reputation and expect to be immune from the consequences of CSI. Given these new findings of how consumers process contradictory CSR information, firms should implement a strategic and deliberate communication plan that delivers different messages to different stakeholders. Specifically, these findings suggest that firms benefit most from a proactive communication strategy with their current customers and a reactive communication strategy with the general public.

It has been more than 20 years since the appearance of the Analytic Network Process (ANP) in the scientific literature. Since that time, this method has been used to address complex decision-making situations and capture the dependency and feedback among the different elements in the decision model. Yet, a review of ANP studies published in 2015 shows that the reports of these studies are either deficient or incomplete in the analysis or reporting to the point that it casts a shadow on the validity of their conclusions. We propose, to our knowledge for the first time, a set of best practices to conduct, analyze and report ANP studies. (C) 2020 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

A review of more than 100 ANP studies published in 2015 shows that the report of these studies is either deficient or incomplete, to the point that it casts a shadow on the validity of their conclusions.In this study we identify key elements that must be present to ensure the validity, replicability and overall quality of the reported ANP study.

Managers face increasing pressure to engage their firms in socially responsible behaviors such as cause marketing. As they seek to become more socially responsible for both philanthropic and economic reasons, their efforts are affecting not only consumers and society, but the employees who work for them and the potential employees they may attract. The majority of research on cause marketing, a type of marketing involving the cooperative efforts of a for-profit business and a nonprofit organization for mutual benefit, has focused on the impact on consumers; therefore, little is known about the effects of social initiatives on employees.

The pinnacle of engagement for a nonprofit is a donation, yet as donations decline and competition increases, some nonprofits risk becoming obsolete. Why does an individual donate? What drives his or her decision? Two constructs are found to be vital in inducing action: prestige and identification. In an increasingly competitive landscape, we hypothesize that organizations can use prestige building activities as a critical strategy to an organization in achieving identification, thus increasing donations. The present study sheds light on the underlying mechanisms through which prestige effects on donation intentions materialize through the mediator of identification.

“Would you like to donate $1.00 today to support the local food bank?” Retailers across the nation are asking this question of consumers at the conclusion of their transactions, encouraging them to make quick, oftentimes spontaneous, charitable decisions. Recent statistics indicate that these miniscule donations add up 63 companies using a point of sale cause marketing (CM) tactic raised nearly $360 million in 1 year, and these companies alone have raised over $2 billion in the past 30 years (Cause Marketing Forum 2013). While such point of sale donations are clearly effective in raising money for charitable causes, the implications for consumers and retailers are understudied. One consumer poll revealed that such tactics may be perceived as an ambush that guilts consumers into making hasty and unwarranted charitable decisions (Taylor 2014). Roseman (2014) described how many shoppers are uncomfortable declining the offer to support the charity. The impact these point of sale requests may have on consumers is almost completely absent from both academic and practitioner perspectives. Thus, this study attempts (1) to identify the antecedents to consumer point of sale donation intentions and (2) to determine the emotions that will occur when consumers participate or decline to participate in such tactics. First, we identify the antecedents to point of sale donation intentions. We then show how consumers who choose to donate at the point of sale will experience increased positive feelings of happiness and joy and less negative feelings of guilt and anxiety as explained by signaling theory (Khan and Dhar 2006, 2010). Using data collected from consumers in a Southeastern US medium-size city, structural equation modeling is utilized, the results are analyzed, and practical implications for retailers are discussed.

Introduction Participation in corporate social responsibility and cause-marketing initiatives have become part of mainstream business practices for national companies, facilitating a shift from “should we support a social cause” to “which social cause should we support” and “how should we support a particular cause?” The assumption that firms will be rewarded for being socially responsible and supporting social initiatives has influenced many organizations to adopt social initiatives to contribute to charitable causes. The majority of research in this area has focused on the positive impact on consumers’ affective and behavioral responses (i.e., Ellen, Mohr, and Webb 2000; Sen and Bhattacharya 2001); however, little is known about the effects of these causemarketing influenced initiatives on employees.