Although price increases are common in business-to-consumer and business-to-business (B2B) markets, research examining the consequences of price increases on financial performance outcomes in B2B ...contexts is scarce. This study takes a relationship perspective on price increases and examines how a portfolio price increase affects the financial performance of the customer relationship and whether and how this effect varies between international business customers from different cultures. Based on objective data from 966 international B2B customers of a chemical goods company, this study examines a large-scale field intervention. Results show that higher portfolio price increases, although rooted in an increase of upstream costs, bring more severe harm to B2B customers’ sales revenue than lower portfolio price increases. These consequences vary with customers’ cultures as B2B customers with culture-specific communal norms are more susceptible to the magnitude of portfolio price increases than customers without such norms. International B2B companies, therefore, need to refrain from implementing uniform price increases and should consider their business customers’ cultural origin when designing and implementing price increases.
Although customer orientation is widely endorsed as a crucial salesperson characteristic, little is known about its effect in price negotiations with customers. This study rectifies this omission and ...argues for its ambiguous effects. While customer-oriented salespeople create value for customers that enables them to reduce price concessions, they may overly focus on customers’ needs and, in doing so, hesitate to defend against such requests. Results of two quantitative studies and one preliminary qualitative study reveal that customer-oriented salespeople do not unconditionally benefit from their created value in price negotiations with customers. That is, salespeople effectively leverage their created value to negotiate prices with customers only if their sales managers instill confidence that high prices are justified. Furthermore, we find that profit-related incentives reduce undesired consequences of salespeople’s customer orientation in price negotiations.
•Functional characteristics drive customer satisfaction, but not always identification.•Customers’ self-definitional needs moderate the link with identification.•Identification occurs when functional ...characteristics match self-definitional needs.•These matches engender identification by creating symbolic value for customers.•Managers can use these insights for customer segmentation and message targeting.
Beyond merely satisfying customers, companies are increasingly striving to build deeper and more meaningful customer relationships characterized by strong customer-company identification. However, whereas previous research has solely focused on symbolic drivers of identification, it remains unclear whether, when, and how managers can build on core functional company characteristics (i.e., quality, innovativeness, and price) to establish customer–company identification. The present study addresses these questions by developing a theoretical framework based on theoretical notions of social identity theory and the cue diagnosticity framework. Evidence from two field studies and one experimental study shows that functional company characteristics are not effective in creating customer–company identification per se, but that their influence depends on whether they match with a self-definitional need that is important to the customer (i.e., self-continuity, self-distinctiveness, or self-enhancement). The findings also reveal the underlying mechanism of this contingency by showing that a self-definitional need fosters customer–company identification because it strengthens the symbolic value of a matching functional characteristic. By identifying specific characteristic–need matches, this research offers novel insights into how managers can leverage functional company characteristics in their targeting and communication efforts to establish meaningful long-term relationships with customers.
Value-creating sales reflect the implementation of value-creating business models in the sales function. ...salespeople need to accept and internalize the new business model, as they are conveyors of ...corporate strategic initiatives, and their support is relevant for its success (Alavi et al., 2022; Krämer et al., 2022). ...implementing value-creating sales reflects a crucial bottleneck for the successful transformation from product-centered business models to value-creating business models. Failure rates of up to 70% indicate that the majority of these digital initiatives fail (Hatami et al., 2018). ...implementing digital technologies reflects a substantial challenge for sales organizations and their salespeople (Denning, 2021; Guenzi and Nijssen, 2021; Habel et al., 2023a). ...sales organizations operating or aiming to transition to value-creating business models should particularly benefit from greater clarity on how digital technologies can engender a sales organization’s creation of customer value by the sales function. ...the core objective of this special issue is to substantiate knowledge that informs researchers and practitioners on how to implement and apply value-creating business models in the sales function while considering the crucial role of digital technologies.
The concept of customer centricity is frequently debated by sales and marketing researchers and practitioners. However, to date no validated scale exists that measures to what extent customers ...perceive companies as customer centric. Against this backdrop, drawing on prior literature, qualitative interviews, and a customer survey (N = 246), the authors develop and validate a measurement scale for perceived customer centricity. In addition, using matched survey and financial data from industrial customers (N = 1,089), the authors examine antecedents and consequences of perceived customer centricity. Results show that customers perceive firms as customer centric if the supplier is customer oriented on both the overall firm level and the salesperson level. Furthermore, perceived customer centricity is strongly linked to customers' loyalty intentions and objective sales revenue, particularly if customers perceive a firm to exhibit high prices. Thus, this article equips managers with a validated and easy-to-use measurement that allows monitoring a firm's progress toward customer centricity.
PDF
