Inspired by Erin Anderson's contributions to sales force research, this paper focuses on research that utilizes quantitative models to investigate important questions in sales force management. The ...purpose is to summarize several significant developments in knowledge over the last 40 years and identify major opportunities for impactful theoretical, empirical, and decision model-based research in the future.
While interest from the practitioner community in topics pertaining to global sales forces continues to accelerate, academic sales research that examines the challenges faced by these salespeople and ...their firms continues to lag behind. In response, the American Marketing Association (AMA) Sales Special Interest Group (Sales SIG) has recently developed an initiative designed to increase access to global sales force data. The initiative provides periodic, "snapshots" of the profession, via survey data, that can be used to guide sales scholars' research agendas and provide critical insight into challenges facing salespeople across the globe. Recently, a group of sales scholars gathered to discuss the initial survey results from B2B salespeople in the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Australia, and India. This manuscript reveals the interesting commonalities-and distinctions-between salespeople in those various countries on issues related to turnover, education and training, compensation, bureaucracy, technology usage, ethics, and macro-level challenges. Additionally, a subsequent discussion of the results, which we detail in this manuscript, reveals fruitful and important future research opportunities for sales scholars interested in global sales research.
This article analyzes empirical research in which the sales manager is the unit of analysis to determine what knowledge has been generated by sales scholars about sales managers and sales management ...practice. It examines what we have learned from sales managers about their jobs and themselves with particular emphasis on the managerial relevance of the work. While the sales literature is vast and despite the importance of sales managers being widely recognized and accepted, an extensive search of the sales literature identified only 163 articles in which the sales manager was the focus of empirical research about what they do. To help better understand what has been discovered, these articles are examined and categorized according to the main focus of each article's research. The results show that with respect to sales managers, our knowledge is limited and substantial opportunities exist for additional research to expand our understanding of the nature, roles, and impact of sales managers as well as providing usable advice for the practice of sales management.
Policy makers have implemented beverage taxes to generate revenue and reduce consumption of sweetened drinks. In January 2017, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, became the second US city to implement a ...beverage excise tax (1.5 cents per ounce).
To compare changes in beverage prices and sales following the implementation of the tax in Philadelphia compared with Baltimore, Maryland (a control city without a tax) and to assess potential cross-border shopping to avoid the tax in neighboring zip codes.
This study used a difference-in-differences approach and analyzed sales data to compare changes between January 1, 2016, before the tax, and December 31, 2017, after the tax. Differences by store type, beverage sweetener status, and beverage size were examined. The commercial retailer sales data included large chain store sales in Philadelphia, Baltimore, and the Pennsylvania zip codes bordering Philadelphia. These data reflect approximately 25% of the ounces of taxed beverages sold in Philadelphia.
Philadelphia's tax on sugar-sweetened and artificially sweetened beverages.
Change in taxed beverage prices and volume sales.
A total of 291 stores (54 supermarkets, 20 mass merchandise stores, 217 pharmacies) were analyzed. The mean price per ounce of taxed beverages in Philadelphia increased from 5.43 cents in 2016 to 6.24 cents in 2017 at supermarkets; from 5.28 cents to 6.24 cents at mass merchandise stores, and from 6.60 cents to 8.28 cents at pharmacies. The mean price per ounce in Baltimore increased from 5.33 cents in 2016 to 5.50 cents in 2017 at supermarkets, from 6.34 cents to 6.52 cents at mass merchandise stores, and from 6.76 cents to 6.93 cents at pharmacies. The mean per-ounce difference in price between the 2 cities was 0.65 cents (95% CI, 0.60 cents-0.69 cents; P<.001) at supermarkets; 0.87 cents (95 % CI, 0.72 cents-1.02 cents; P<.001) at mass merchandise stores, and 1.56 cents (95% CI, 1.50 cents-1.62 cents; P<.001) at pharmacies. Total volume sales of taxed beverages in Philadelphia decreased by 1.3 billion ounces (from 2.475 billion to 1.214 billion) or by 51.0% after tax implementation. Volume sales in the Pennsylvania border zip codes, however, increased by 308.2 million ounces (from 713.1 million to 1.021 billion), offsetting the decrease in Philadelphia's volume sales by 24.4%. In Philadelphia, beverage volume sales in ounces per 4-week period between before and after tax periods decreased from 4.85 million to 1.99 million at supermarkets, from 2.98 million to 1.72 million at mass merchandise stores, and from 0.16 million to 0.13 million at pharmacies. In Baltimore, the beverage volume sales in ounces decreased from 2.83 million to 2.81 million at supermarkets, from 1.05 million to 1.00 million at mass merchandise stores, and from 0.14 million to 0.13 million at pharmacies. This was a 58.7% reduction at supermarkets (difference-in-differences, -2.85 million ounces; 95% CI, -4.10 million to -1.60 million ounces; P < .001), 40.4% reduction at mass merchandise stores (difference-in-differences, -1.20 million ounces; 95% CI, -2.04 million to -0.36 million ounces; P = .001), and 12.6% reduction in pharmacies (difference-in-differences, -0.02 million ounces; 95% CI, -0.03 million to -0.01 million ounces; P < .001).
In Philadelphia in 2017, the implementation of a beverage excise tax on sugar-sweetened and artificially sweetened beverages was associated with significantly higher beverage prices and a significant and substantial decline in volume of taxed beverages sold. This decrease in taxed beverage sales volume was partially offset by increases in volume of sales in bordering areas.
Despite the widespread adoption of search and recommendation technologies on the Internet, empirical research that examines the effect of these technologies is scarce. How do online consumers use ...these technologies? Does consumers' technology usage have an effect on the sales to them or their purchasing patterns? This paper empirically measures consumers' usage of website technologies by analyzing server log data. We match technology usage data to sales data, controlling for consumers' historical purchasing behavior. Our unique data set allows us to reveal the relationship between technology usage and online sales. Our analyses show that consumers' information technology usage has a significant effect on the sales to them, but this effect varies for different technologies and across different products. In particular, the use of directed search has a positive effect on the sales of promoted products, whereas it has a negative effect on the sales of nonpromoted products. In contrast, the use of a recommendation system has a positive effect on the sales of both promoted and nonpromoted products. Surprisingly, the use of nondirected search has an insignificant effect on online sales.
For years, online retailers have maintained a price advantage over brick-and-mortar retailers by not collecting sales tax at the time of sale. Recently, several states have required that online ...retailer Amazon collect sales tax during checkout. Using transaction-level data, we document that households living in these states reduced their Amazon purchases by 9.4% following the implementation of the sales tax laws, implying elasticities of −1.2 to −1.4. The effect is stronger for large purchases, where purchases declined by 29.1%, corresponding to an elasticity of −3.9. Studying competitors in the electronics field, we find some evidence of substitution toward competing retailers.
Purpose
Previous sales control research has limited the definition of outcome controls exclusively to sales outcomes in an outside sales context. In addition to sales outcome controls, inside sales ...managers use phone operational outcomes to influence inside sales agent performance, supporting the need to expand the broader definition of outcome controls. Hence, the purpose of this paper is to explore the need to bifurcate outcome controls into two distinct variables: sales and phone operational controls. Researchers know little about the application of sales outcome controls beyond sales-only outcomes, which, in turn, limits the definition of outcome controls.
Design/methodology/approach
Through the utilization of survey, secondary operational data and sales manager’s feedback, this paper demonstrates that the definition of outcome controls needs to be divided into two distinct areas, sales and phone operational controls for inside sales agents, which, in turn, acts collectively to impact an inside sales agent’s job performance and satisfaction.
Findings
This research demonstrates that inside sales managers depend on both sales and phone operational outcome controls to drive sales agent performance, varying in degrees by industry. Even as inside sales managers focus on creating an employee-centric autonomous motivational work culture, the overarching controlling factors associated with phone operational outcomes dampen an inside sales agent’s performance and job satisfaction.
Research limitations/implications
To the best of the authors’ knowledge, as the first sales control research to examine an inside sales context, this study provides support to further study sales controls in an inside sales context. This research can be enhanced by examining business-to-consumer inside sales environments, behavior controls, greater sample size and additional work outcomes such as turnover and tenure.
Practical implications
The findings have important implications because they can help practitioners understand the effect that both sales and phone operational outcomes have on sales agent performance. It also illuminates the need for inside sales managers to be less controlling in their focus on phone operational outcomes, as such a practice has a negative influence on key sales agent job outcomes.
Originality/value
To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first to triangulate multiple data sources to illustrate the need to evaluate both sales and phone operational outcomes as broader components of sales outcome controls. The study of sales controls in a different sales context suggests that sales management controls may differ by sales context, opening the door to extend the vast sales control literature beyond its current context of outside sales.
We develop actionable design propositions for collaborative sales and operations planning (S&OP) based on the observation of contexts in which benefits are generated — or are absent — from retail ...information sharing. An information sharing pilot project in a real-life setting of two product manufacturers and one retailer was designed. The project resulted in one manufacturer, serving a retailer from its local factory, developing a process for collaborative S&OP, while the other manufacturer serving a retailer from more distant regional factories abandoned the process. The evaluation of the outcomes experienced by the two manufacturers allows us to examine contexts in fine-grained detail and explain why introducing information sharing in the S&OP processes produce — or fail to produce — benefits. The paper contributes to the supply chain information sharing literature by presenting a field tested and evolved S&OP design for non-standard demand situations, and by a contextual analysis of the mechanisms that produce the benefits of retailer collaboration and information sharing in the S&OP process.
We use data from eBay to identify hundreds of thousands of instances in which retailers posted otherwise identical product listings with targeted variation in pricing and auction design. We use these ...matched listings to measure the dispersion in auction prices for identical goods sold by the same seller, to estimate nonparametric auction demand curves, to analyze the effect of buy it now options, and to assess consumer sensitivity to shipping fees. The scale of the data allows us to show that the estimates are robust to narrower criteria for matching listings, thereby addressing plausible concerns about endogeneity and selection biases.
Purpose
The increasingly complex business-to-business (B2B) sales process necessitates that sales managers strike the right balance between appropriate resource allocation, while also maintaining the ...profitability of the organization. While previous research has mainly focused on how changes in the business environment pose distinct challenges to salespeople, very little research has focused on how sales managers should react to these complex situations. Drawing upon the extant sales research, this paper aims to point to a gap in the literature of how sales managers deal with the complexity associated with the sales process and deal with the same.
Design/methodology/approach
Methods from the grounded theory research approach were used to conduct 18 in-depth interviews with B2B sales managers. Purposive sampling was used to identify the participants.
Findings
A taxonomy of sales situations that reflects the changing complexity of the sales function and how sales managers need to orchestrate their resource allocation decisions to ensure appropriate value capture from B2B relationships emerged within the themes. This paper highlights four fundamental tenets of sales situations that account for both the complexity of the sales process and the value appropriation challenge that sales managers face.
Practical implications
The taxonomy will help sales managers have a better understanding of the changing complexity in the B2B sales process and help them with decisions making. Sales managers can orchestrate their resource allocation to achieve value appropriation.
Originality/value
This paper develops a new taxonomy of the sales situation. It unravels the changing complexity of the B2B sales process and discusses how value appropriation can be achieved by sales managers.
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