An integrative conceptual model developed tested the relative influence of servant leadership and narcissism in relation to strategic variables including adaptation and cooperation on competitive advantage and firm performance. Data were collected using structured on-site interviews conducted with 140 and 95 key respondents of randomly selected manufactuarer-export houses located in U.S. and China, respectively. Empirical results revealed that both strategic variables and leadership variables were positively related to competitive advantage, which, in turn, influenced firm performance. The influence of societal culture was evident in our results in that relationships among antecedents of firm performance were denser for U.S. than they were for Chinese firms. Based on these findings, insights for administrative guidance and implications for influencing and managing a firms ISA between manufacturers and their principal international distribution channel alliance partners were discussed. Research drawbacks are identified and directions for future studies are proffered.

Purpose This research seeks to fill a gap in the service and retailing marketplace experience literature as well as retailing practice by extending Attribution and Expectancy Disconfirmation Theories to the large and growing market of consumers with vision disabilities. It reveals how accessibility-related service failures with a retailer's website can lead to anti-firm reactions from blind and low vision consumers, including social media sharing, negative word-of-mouth (NWOM) and avoidance of the retailer's other sales channels even if they are accessible. Design/methodology/approach Blind respondents were recruited from national blindness organizations to participate in this study using a within-subjects design to test reactions to accessibility-related propositions in two different scenarios involving varying degrees of effort. Findings In both high- and low-effort conditions, an accessibility-related service failure leads to the anti-firm consequences of NWOM, social media sharing and avoidance of the retailer's sales channels. Additionally, blind and low vision consumers who also feel inaccessible websites are discriminatory develop stronger anti-firm attitudes toward the offending retailers. Further, we aver that the retailer's entire website including all its features, not just the homepage, should be made accessible to the growing market of vision-impaired consumers and thereby obtain substantial competitive advantages. Originality/value This research pertains to the service failure and recovery nomological network. It extends the existing paradigm to include accessibility-related service failures experienced by consumers with disabilities into the specialized category of discrimination-based service failures in instances where service recovery is not easily achieved. Empirical investigations of these experiences have been rare, despite the frequency with which they occur.

Abstract Personal selling and sales management issues have been the focus of tremendous attention by research scholars, thus expanding our extant knowledge of the field of marketing. However, studies on the development of the discipline of personal selling and sales management from a historical perspective have been sparse. Accordingly, this manuscript makes a unique contribution by partially addressing this gap in the literature by tracing the transition of personal selling through sales management to a prominent role in strategic marketing channel management. From a historical vantage point this article discusses the genesis and evolution of personal selling and sales management, which include the Pioneer Era (1750–1780), Era of Scarcity (1780–1820), Era of Production (1820–1870), Era of Innovation and Growth (1870–1914), Era of Scientific Management (1880–1920), Era of the Roaring Twenties (1920–1929), Era of World Turmoil (1929–1945), Era of Postwar Recovery and Prosperity (1945–1977), Era of Personal Computers, Empowerment of Salespeople, Changing Roles of Sales Managers (1977–2000), and the Era of Customer Relationships and Top-Level Sales Managers As Strategic Channel Managers (2000–Present). With reference to the current era, the article discusses the role salespeople in general and senior- to top-level sales managers in particular play in fostering long-term relationships with a firm’s marketing channel members by moving from transactional selling and relationship selling to the current greater emphasis on forging symbiotic and synergistic strategic partnerships/alliances with reseller intermediaries.

This study develops a scale based on the concept of “consumer normalcy,” which is composed of four dimensions: (1) ability to participate in the marketplace, (2) demonstrating competence and control, (3) achieving distinction, and (4) being perceived as an equal. This important new construct can be used as a tool to more fully understand the experience of an individual who feels he or she has been discriminated against in the marketplace based on demographic characteristics such as gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation/preference, or disability. The scale is tested in two large random samples using Amazon’s Mechanical Turk, where one sample shows how consumer normalcy is directly connected to avoidance of the offending retailer and how this effect along with the scale’s measurement capabilities are stronger in the demographic-based service failure condition. The Consumer Normalcy Scale may provide a valuable tool for other scholars who may be interested in conducting research in areas of marketplace diversity and discrimination as well. The diversity of the marketplace requires investigation of differential treatment of consumers, along with the ramifications for firms who do not implement appropriate policies to prevent the occurrence of such service failures. This scale provides a view into the psychological mechanisms of how and why consumers feel as though they have been discriminated against along with a prediction of subsequent anti-firm behaviors. Following the proven processes for scale development has led to the achievement of favorable results in both validity and reliability considerations. This scale measures what it purports to measure and should be relied on to provide valid and consistent results. These were preliminary tests, and further exploration into the scale’s behavior in different populations is anticipated.

This research uniquely contributes to the marketing policy literature by illuminating the widespread yet seldom studied problem of online inaccessibility of retail websites affecting approximately 30 million disabled Americans. When a website is not designed to be navigated easily or is not compatible with assistive technology such as a screen-reader, these potential customers are not able to independently search for information and conduct transactions. Blind and low vision participants in an empirical study provide their opinions regarding accessibility policy issues and reveal that their frustrations with inaccessible retail websites may result, not only in avoidance of the retailer in its different sales channels but also in antifirm behaviors driven by negative attitudes toward perceived retailer accessibility/disability policy that spur feelings of online marketplace discrimination. Using two different evaluation tools, the top 100 retailers in the United States were evaluated on the accessibility of their websites over the past 4 years (2015-2018). Results show that most websites contain many design errors making navigation very difficult or even impossible for vision impaired consumers. The argument is made that online retailers who proactively address these inaccessibility issues on their websites may significantly increase their customer base and profitability.

Drawing on the tenants of the adaptive strategy paradigm and configuration theory in the management and marketing literature, a model introducing the concept of salesperson macro-adaptive selling strategy that considers the overall selling environment, as contrasted with micro-adaptive selling tactics tailored to a specific customer, is introduced and investigated empirically within the context of the financial services industry. Using a widely accepted management theory typology—prospector, defender, analyzer—the model places macro-adaptive selling strategy into the sales performance literature as an expanded more holistic understanding of strategies influencing salesperson performance. Findings indicate significant direct and indirect effects on sales performance and job-related incomes, including job involvement, effort, and job satisfaction, for salespeople using different macro-adaptive selling strategies.

Understanding, building, and predicting customer loyalty in e-commerce are critical activities for long-run profitability. Successfully carrying out these activities is challenging due to the complex mix of both business organization and customer factors that may influence and drive e-loyalty. We demonstrate that business factors, such as credibility, e-satisfaction and site knowledge, and customer factors, such as inertia, innovativeness, and aggressiveness, influence e-loyalty. Our analyses show that business credibility is affected by the reputation of the e-business and its congruence with the customers' self-image; e-satisfaction by the customers' value perception, care, and choice; and site knowledge by customer experience, involvement, and expertise. Business factors account for about 75% of the explained variation in e-loyalty and customer factors for the rest. Understanding the controllable business and uncontrollable customer factors that drive customer loyalty should enable e-commerce retailers to continually assess these factors and make appropriate changes in marketing strategy.

Prior research has shown that after receiving online services of varying quality, customer expectations are either positively disconfirmed (i.e., services exceed customer expectations) or negatively disconfirmed (i.e., services fall short of customer expectations). The present research examines expectation disconfirmation across national cultures and its subsequent impacts on e-word-of-mouth, e-satisfaction, and e-loyalty. The results show that Chinese customers are more tolerant of e-services that result in negative disconfirmations, although online shoppers from the United States are more likely to be loyal or generate positive e-word-of-mouth when experiencing positive disconfirmations. Suggestions for adjusting multinational e-tailers' strategies to better serve customers across national cultures are discussed.

Applying the most effective leadership style (participative, supportive, directive, or achievement-oriented) in specific cultural environments can provide global sales managers with powerful tools for managing their diverse salespeople on a world-wide basis. This conceptualization seeks to advance our current understanding of sales manager leadership by developing hypotheses for future testing to suggest the appropriate leadership style to use in different cultural settings.

Today’s salespeople must be trained to sell in multicultural markets, yet those largely responsible for sales training, i.e., sales managers, also need multicultural training. The limited literature on sales management training indicates that most sales managers receive little or no training, and rarely does the training cover multicultural markets. Unless sales managers receive sufficient multicultural training, their sales forces and their companies will have difficulty competing globally in the 21st Century.

Salespeople play the important boundary spanning role that ensures the voices of customers are heard within the selling organization and that their needs are effectively met. To achieve these goals, salespeople need to be psychologically empowered to make decisions that are sound and timely. In this research we investigate the consequences of psychological empowerment of salespeople. Our results reveal that sales force empowerment favorably impacts the (a) attitude of salespeople (reduced role conflict, enhanced salesperson job satisfaction, and heightened organizational commitment), (b) job outcomes ( increased customer-oriented selling and organizational citizenship behavior), and (c) customer outcomes (augmented customer relational satisfaction and customer loyalty).

Traditionally, salespeople have been called the "eyes and ears" of a company in the marketplace. But, in the era of customer relationship management, they have been largely underutilized even though scholars continue to call for understanding salespersons' effectiveness in interacting with customers and buying centers (Zoltners et. al. 2008). Our primary purpose in this paper is to show how salespeople can contribute significantly to improving customer relationship management by using their knowledge of the tacit inner workings of buying centers.

Today’s sales managers need comprehensive multicultural training to successfully prepare their sales forces to sell in increasingly diverse domestic and foreign markets. Yet, the sparse literature on sales management training indicates that most sales managers do not receive any training for their multicultural roles. Unless sales managers begin receiving multicultural training, their sales forces and their companies will have difficulty competing in the 21st Century.

Online retailers constantly strive to improve customer satisfaction. However, satisfaction levels can vary significantly across cultures when customers experience mixed quality services, that is, services with a mixture of high and low quality service attributes. Based on two studies, we find that Westerners (e.g., European Americans) react more negatively than East Asians (e.g., Chinese) toward mixed quality online services. Our findings show that due to differences in thinking style, Westerners (analytic thinkers) are more likely to focus on negative service attributes than East Asians (holistic thinkers), who tend to consider the amalgam of high and low quality service attributes as an integrated whole when forming their overall perceptions and levels of satisfaction. Moreover, the results suggest that for online retailers marketing across cultures, providing superior quality on each individual service attribute may be more important to achieving satisfaction for customers from Western rather than Eastern cultures.

In severe economic downturns, only a few business leaders have the courage and wisdom to invest in customer loyalty to increase profits instead of reflexively cutting costs to try to maintain falling profit margins. Moreover, the usual research and advice tends to focus on how companies can effectively and efficiently reduce costs in order to survive an economic decline. This study contributes to the literature by offering a fresh look at how best to respond in tough economic times by examining companies who have responded traditionally with cost cutting strategies versus companies who instead have invested in customer loyalty. We make the unique and contrarian argument that the latter strategy can be the superior business strategy, which underscores the originality of this investigation. Thus, the purpose of this study is to highlight why investing resources in creating and retaining loyal customers is the best strategy for companies to survive and prosper in tough economic conditions while simultaneously gaining longer-run competitive advantage. Based on quantitative and qualitative survey research methodology, the study findings identify and explain key customer loyalty measures, including: customization for customers, communication interactivity, nurturing of customers, commitment to customers, customer sharing networks, customer focused product assortments, facile exchanges, and customer engagement. Perceptive company executives will measure, benchmark, and regularly compare their performances on these key customer loyalty measures with different customer groups versus their company's past performances, managerial goals, and competitors, then make appropriate adjustments to retain their loyal customers and prosper during tough economic times.

Relationship marketing literature suggests that concepts such as trust, integration, and relationship openness tend to increase cooperation and commitment among channels of distribution partners. However, can relationship marketing theory be extended to international strategic alliances in the manufacturer–distribution channel context? More specifically, can cooperation and commitment among international distribution channel partners be fostered using similar management practices on a cross-national basis? Given the scant research on strategic alliances in international distribution channels, this investigation seeks to validate empirically the effects of strategic integration, trust, and relationship openness among international channel partners as determinants of cooperation and commitment, which in turn affect overall channel performance. Research propositions postulating the linkages among the focal constructs within a conceptual model of cooperation and commitment in international distribution alliances are developed to provide insights and guidelines for manufacturers in selecting and working with international distributors as strategic alliance partners. Keywords: International Strategic Alliances, Cooperation, Strategic Integration, Trust, Relationship Commitment, Relationship Closeness, Performance, Relationship Satisfaction To cite this document: Rajiv Mehta, Takao Ito, Jolanta Mazur, and Rolph E. Anderson, "Determinants and Consequences of Cooperation in International Strategic Distribution Channel Alliances", Contemporary Management Research, Vol.9, No.4, pp.363-368, 2013. Permanent link to this document: http://dx.doi.org/10.7903/cmr.11072