http://repub.eur.nl/res/aut/5536/ List of Publications en http://repub.eur.nl/static-eur/img/logo.png http://repub.eur.nl http://repub.eur.nl/res/pub/39630/ 2013-04-15T00:00:00Z Consumer embarrassment is an important concern for marketers. Yet, little is known about embarrassment in passive situations like advertising viewing. The authors investigate when and why consumers experience embarrassment as a result of exposure to socially sensitive advertisements. The theory distinguishes between viewing potentially embarrassing ads together with an audience that shares the social identity targeted by the message and viewing the same ads together with an audience that does not share the targeted social identity. Four studies provide support for the theory, demonstrating that advertising targeting and social context jointly determine feelings of embarrassment and advertising effectiveness. http://repub.eur.nl/res/pub/26661/ 2012-09-01T00:00:00Z We explore genetic and neurological bases for customer orientation (CO) and contrast them with sales orientation (SO). Study 1 is a field study that establishes that CO, but not SO, leads to greater opportunity recognition. Study 2 examines genetic bases for CO and finds that salespeople with CO are more likely to have the 7R variant of the DRD4 gene. This is consistent with basic research on dopamine receptor activity in the brain that underlies novelty seeking, the reward function, and risk taking. Study 3 examines the neural basis of CO and finds that salespeople with CO, but not SO, experience greater activation of their mirror neuron systems and neural processes associated with empathy. Managerial and research implications are discussed. http://repub.eur.nl/res/pub/25711/ 2011-08-01T00:00:00Z We conduct a field experiment in a large retail chain to test basic predictions of tournament theory regarding prize spread and noise. A random subset of the 208 stores participates in two-stage elimination tournaments. Tournaments differ in the distribution of prize money across winners of the first and second round of the tournament. As predicted by theory, we find that a more convex prize spread increases performance in the second round at the expense of first-round performance, although the magnitude of these effects is small. Moreover, the treatment effect is significantly larger for stores that historically have relatively stable performance as compared to stores with more noisy performance. http://repub.eur.nl/res/pub/31480/ 2011-07-15T00:00:00Z Several studies indicate that the cerebellum might play a role in experiencing and/or controlling emphatic emotions, but it remains to be determined whether there is a distinction between positive and negative emotions, and, if so, which specific parts of the cerebellum are involved in these types of emotions. Here, we visualized activations of the cerebellum and extracerebellar regions using high-field fMRI, while we asked participants to observe and imitate images with pictures of human faces expressing different emotional states or with moving geometric shapes as control. The state of the emotions could be positive (happiness and surprise), negative (anger and disgust), or neutral. The positive emotional faces only evoked mild activations of crus 2 in the cerebellum, whereas the negative emotional faces evoked prominent activations in lobules VI and VIIa in its hemispheres and lobules VIII and IX in the vermis. The cerebellar activations associated with negative emotions occurred concomitantly with activations of mirror neuron domains such as the insula and amygdala. These data suggest that the potential role of the cerebellum in control of emotions may be particularly relevant for goal-directed behavior that is required for observing and reacting to another person's (negative) expressions. http://repub.eur.nl/res/pub/30562/ 2011-07-01T00:00:00Z This study explores how account managers-employees who operate as entrepreneurial customer boundary spanners-obtain intrafirm knowledge (organizational and expertise knowledge) from diverse colleagues so as to develop tailor-made solutions for their customers. Access to intrafirm knowledge is obtained through two independent knowledge-based exchanges within internal knowledge markets: account managers invest in different activities in order to signal communal and deal-maker reputations. In exchange, colleagues share organizational and expertise knowledge that ultimately contribute to account managers' performance. The types of knowledge shared by colleagues depend on the reputations of account managers. http://repub.eur.nl/res/pub/26417/ 2011-06-01T00:00:00Z It has been 25 years since the publication of a comprehensive review of the full spectrum of sales-performance drivers. This study takes stock of the contemporary field and synthesizes empirical evidence from the period 1982-2008. The authors revise the classification scheme for sales performance determinants devised by Walker et al. (1977) and estimate both the predictive validity of its sub-categories and the impact of a range of moderators on determinant-sales performance relationships. Based on multivariate causal model analysis, the results make two major observations: (1) Five sub-categories demonstrate significant relationships with sales performance: selling-related knowledge (β =.28), degree of adaptiveness (β =.27), role ambiguity (β = -.25), cognitive aptitude (β =.23) and work engagement (β =.23). (2) These sub-categories are moderated by measurement method, research context, and sales-type variables. The authors identify managerial implications of the results and offer suggestions for further research, including the conjecture that as the world is moving toward a knowledge-intensive economy, salespeople could be functioning as knowledge-brokers. The results seem to back this supposition and indicate how it might inspire future research in the field of personal selling. http://repub.eur.nl/res/pub/21864/ 2010-12-01T00:00:00Z We conduct a field experiment among 189 stores of a retail chain to study dynamic incentive effects of relative performance pay. Employees in the randomly selected treatment stores could win a bonus by outperforming three comparable stores from the control group over the course of four weeks. Treatment stores received weekly feedback on relative performance. Control stores were kept unaware of their involvement, so that their performance generates exogenous variation in the relative performance of the treatment stores. As predicted by theory, treatment stores that lag far behind do not respond to the incentives, while the responsiveness of treatment stores close to winning a bonus increases in relative performance. On average, the introduction of the relative performance pay scheme does not lead to higher performance. http://repub.eur.nl/res/pub/21986/ 2010-11-01T00:00:00Z Emotional wisdom is defined as a set of seven dimensions of basic skills and meta-narratives concerning how to regulate emotions within specific domains in such a way that the individual's and firm's well-being are tied together. Using operationalizations of emotional wisdom for salespersons from a wide range of industries (Study 1) and in automotive dealerships (Study 2), with respect to both colleagues and customers, it is discovered that salespeople who score high on emotional wisdom cope differently with socially challenging situations and achieve better social relationships than those who score low on emotional wisdom. http://repub.eur.nl/res/pub/20379/ 2010-07-20T00:00:00Z It has been twenty-five years since the publication of a comprehensive review of the full spectrum of sales-performance drivers. This study takes stock of the contemporary field and synthesizes empirical evidence from the period 1982–2008. The authors revise the classification scheme for sales performance determinants devised by Walker, Churchill, and Ford (1977) and estimate both the predictive validity of its sub-categories and the impact of a range of moderators on determinant-sales performance relationships. Based on multivariate causal model analysis, the results make two major observations: (1) Five sub-categories demonstrate significant relationships with sales performance: selling-related knowledge (β=.28), degree of adaptiveness (β=.27), role ambiguity (β=-.25), cognitive aptitude (β=.23) and work engagement (β=.23). (2) These sub-categories are moderated by measurement method, research context, and sales-type variables. The authors identify managerial implications of the results and offer suggestions for further research, including the conjecture that as the world is moving toward a knowledge-intensive economy, salespeople could be functioning as knowledge-brokers. The results seem to back this supposition and indicate how it might inspire future research in the field of personal selling. http://repub.eur.nl/res/pub/20302/ 2009-10-01T00:00:00Z The goal of this article is to develop a new theory-driven scale for measuring salespeople's interpersonal-mentalizing skills—that is, a salesperson's ability to “read the minds” of customers in the sense of first recognizing customer intentionality and processing subtle interpersonal cues and then adjusting volitions accordingly. Drawing from research on autism and neuroscience, the authors develop a model of brain functioning that differentiates better-skilled from less-skilled interpersonal mentalizers. They establish the convergent, discriminant, concurrent, predictive, and nomological validities of measures of the scale using four methods in four separate studies: confirmatory factor analysis, structural equation models, multitrait–multimethod matrix procedures, and functional magnetic resonance imaging. The study is one of the first to test the validity of measures of a scale not only in traditional ways but also by adopting procedures from neuroscience. http://repub.eur.nl/res/pub/16517/ 2009-07-31T00:00:00Z We ran a field experiment in a Dutch retail chain consisting of 128 stores. In a random sample of these stores, we introduced short-term sales competitions among subsets of stores. We find that sales competitions have a large effect on sales growth, but only in stores where the store's manager and a large fraction of the employees have the same gender. Remarkably, results are alike for sales competitions with and without monetary rewards, suggesting a high symbolic value of winning a tournament. Lastly, despite the substantial variation in team size, we find no evidence for free-riding. http://repub.eur.nl/res/pub/16227/ 2009-04-08T00:00:00Z This study integrates the concepts of value creation and value claiming into a theoretical framework that emphasizes the dependence of resource value maximization on value-claiming motivations in outsourcing decisions. To test this theoretical framework, it develops refutable implications to explain the firm's outsourcing decision, and it uses data from 178 firms in the publishing and printing industry on outsourcing of application services. The results show that in outsourcing decisions, resource value and transaction costs are simultaneously considered and that outsourcing decisions are dependent on alignment between resource and transaction attributes. The findings support a resource contingency view that highlights value-claiming mechanisms as resource contingency in interorganizational strategic decisions. http://repub.eur.nl/res/pub/15853/ 2008-12-01T00:00:00Z This paper develops a framework to examine how ad agencies can continuously generate creative output, where creative output estimated by ad agencies winning awards over time. The data are collected from 68 Dutch ad agencies with a total of 1,450 clients over a four-year period in the Netherlands. Findings show that ad agencies with creative climates high in both organizational encouragement and workload pressure but low in both work group support and sufficient resources predicts why ad agencies win awards over time. In addition, ad agencies with a portfolio of clients that consists of market leaders and that operate within a limited amount of industries (limited heterogeneity) also predict creative award propensity and momentum over time. Suggestions for future research are offered. http://repub.eur.nl/res/pub/12690/ 2008-07-01T00:00:00Z Using two samples of salespeople, the authors investigate how a combination of general mental ability (GMA) and specific skills and capabilities (social competence and thinking styles) enables salespeople to reach their sales goals. The study finds evidence for an interaction between GMA and social competence. When combined with high social competence, high GMA leads to the highest sales performance; when combined with low social competence, high GMA leads to the lowest sales performance. In addition, the authors find interaction effects between GMA and a judicial thinking style. Salespeople with a high GMA have the most potential for attaining high levels of sales performance when combined with specific skills; when salespeople with a high GMA lack these skills, they may become the firm's worst performers. http://repub.eur.nl/res/pub/12633/ 2008-06-18T00:00:00Z Using two different samples of salespeople, the authors investigate how a combination of general mental ability (GMA) and specific skills and capabilities (social competence and thinking styles) allows salespeople to reach their sales goals. The study finds evidence for an interaction between GMA and social competence. If combined with high social competence, high GMA leads to highest sales performance; if combined with low social competence, high GMA leads to lowest sales performance. In addition, interaction effects between GMA and a judicial thinking style were found. Salespeople high on GMA have the most potential for attaining high levels of sales performance when combined with specific skills; when lacking these skills they may become the firm’s worst performers. http://repub.eur.nl/res/pub/12634/ 2008-06-18T00:00:00Z The purpose of this paper is to discuss a simulation of marketing budgeting rules that is based on a simplified version of the market share attraction model. The budgeting rules are roughly equivalent to those that may be used in practice. The simulation illustrates the concept of path dependence in dynamic marketing systems and shows how it might result from decision rules potentially applied by marketers and retailers. Path dependence results from positive feedback in dynamic systems that imparts momentum to market choices. Where the potential for path dependence exists, there are implications for defining and measuring long-term effects of marketing decisions in a way that is meaningful to managers and researchers. In the simulations presented we show that limited retails assortment may contribute to path dependence when firms use either percentage-of-revenue rules or "market learning" experiments to set budgets. While other budgeting procedures (e.g., matching competition) may stabilize market share, this stability in the share dimension comes at the cost of instability for budgets and profits. http://repub.eur.nl/res/pub/12691/ 2007-05-01T00:00:00Z We investigate social circles in intra-firm settings. First, we argue that social circles are inhabited by individuals whose attitudes display fit with the objectives of the social circle rather than more self-centered instrumentalism or calculation. For a test of this hypothesis, we distinguish between friendship circles and strategy-influence circles. We find that friendship circle membership is positively associated with attitudes that display empathic concern but negatively with more instrumental attitudes, whereas strategy-influence circle membership is positively associated with attitudes that display long-term ambition but negatively with attitudes that display short-term calculation. Second, we argue and find that membership of social circles affects individual performance (social circles foster the exchange of information, for which we find clear evidence), albeit not necessarily in a linear fashion. Our new insights into social circle membership and performance implications can guide individuals in seeking access to such social circles and can aid management in understanding and perhaps influencing intra-firm knowledge flows. http://repub.eur.nl/res/pub/7899/ 2006-08-22T00:00:00Z We investigate social circles in intra-firm settings. First, we argue that social circles are inhabited by individuals whose attitudes display fit with the objectives of the social circle rather than more self-centered instrumentalism or calculation. For a test of this hypothesis, we distinguish between friendship circles and strategy-influence circles. We find that friendship circle membership is positively associated with attitudes that display empathic concern but negatively with more instrumental attitudes, whereas strategy-influence circle membership is positively associated with attitudes that display long-term ambition but negatively with attitudes that display short-term calculation. Second, we argue and find that membership of social circles affects individual performance (social circles foster the exchange of information, for which we find clear evidence), albeit not necessarily in a linear fashion. Our new insights into social circle membership and performance implications can guide individuals in seeking access to such social circles and can aid management in understanding and perhaps influencing intra-firm knowledge flows. http://repub.eur.nl/res/pub/12693/ 2006-07-01T00:00:00Z The authors study how salespeople cope with social anxiety during customer contacts and find that two tactics, sale perseverance and task concentration, ultimately reduce dysfunctional protective actions. Both coping tactics, however, are differentially moderated by strength of felt physiological sensations and strength of negative expectations and thoughts. Salespeople experiencing anxiety cognitions should distract themselves by concentrating on their task to free up their thinking in relation to the task at hand. Engaging in behaviors to modify the situation by persevering on the sale, on the other hand, occupies action space and should be the coping strategy of choice for those salespeople confronting physiological sensations in relation to felt anxiety. Hypotheses are tested on a sample of 171 salespersons. http://repub.eur.nl/res/pub/12692/ 2006-05-22T00:00:00Z Purpose – Seeks to better understand whether a retailer’s trust in a manufacturer is a key concept in their motivation to allocate resources to those manufacturers with whom they have a long-term relationship compared with economical motivations. Design/methodology/approach – A survey research method is used to study all customers from three large manufacturers in The Netherlands. These retailers had to answer questions about their trust in a manufacturer, the manufacturer’s investments in the relationship, and their marketing efforts. Questions were also asked about the allocation of their own scarce resources for the manufacturer, specifically their adoption of in-store marketing campaigns initiated by the manufacturer. Structural equation models and regression analyses were employed. http://repub.eur.nl/res/pub/12694/ 2005-04-01T00:00:00Z This study examines the relationship between burnout and performance among three samples of account managers. Using a multidimensional and multifaceted burnout instrument, the authors tried to uncover meaningful configurations based on the basic symptoms of burnout and the role members to whom these symptoms refer. Subsequently, the authors explored how the revealed burnout configurations are related to in-role and extra-role performance. Cluster analysis resulted in five burnout configurations, including the burned-out group, the non-burned-out group, and three moderately burned-out groups. As predicted, the burnout configurations performed differently. http://repub.eur.nl/res/pub/12683/ 2005-01-01T00:00:00Z Studie over kennisoverdracht tussen organisaties. De laatste jaren is men steeds meer het belang van kennis voor het functioneren en besturen van organisaties gaan inzien. Hiertoe behoort het door een onderneming delen van kennis met haar cliënten (vice versa!). Op dit belangwekkende snijpunt van kennismanagement en marketing gaat Verbeke (hoogleraar sales- en accountmanagement aan de Erasmus Universiteit) nader in. Verkopen van kennis is in hoge mate het verkopen van jezelf als kenniswerker, als betrouwbaar gesprekspartner en adviseur, bijvoorbeeld advocaat, raadgevend ingenieur, accountmanager of management-consultant. Hoe gaan adviesprocessen in z'n werk? Welke kennis, vaardigheden en karaktereigenschappen spelen een rol bij het succesvol vervullen van een adviesfunctie? Hoe verwerf je aantrekkelijke opdrachten en hoe voorkom je door de mand te vallen? http://repub.eur.nl/res/pub/12695/ 2004-09-01T00:00:00Z This study examines the adaptive consequences of pride in personal selling and its self-regulation with colleagues and customers. Study 1 investigates the effects of experiencing pride, where two benefits were found. First, pride increases salespersons’ performance-related motivations. Specifically, it promotes the use of adaptive selling strategies, greater effort, and self-efficacy. Second, pride positively affects organizational citizenship behaviors. Study 2 takes an emotion-process point of view and compares excessive pride (hubris) with positive pride. The results show that salespeople are capable of self-regulating the expression of these emotions differently toward colleagues and customers via anticipated feelings of fear, shame, and regret. Salespeople, in other words, are affected by their emotions, but they also are capable of controlling them to their advantage. http://repub.eur.nl/res/pub/12696/ 2004-03-01T00:00:00Z The job demands-resources (JD-R) model was used to examine the relationship between job characteristics, burnout, and (other-ratings of) performance (N = 146). We hypothesized that job demands (e.g., work pressure and emotional demands) would be the most important antecedents of the exhaustion component of burnout, which, in turn, would predict in-role performance (hypothesis 1). In contrast, job resources (e.g., autonomy and social support) were hypothesized to be the most important predictors of extra-role performance, through their relationship with the disengagement component of burnout (hypothesis 2). In addition, we predicted that job resources would buffer the relationship between job demands and exhaustion (hypothesis 3), and that exhaustion would be positively related to disengagement (hypothesis 4). The results of structural equation modeling analyses provided strong support for hypotheses 1, 2, and 4, but rejected hypothesis 3. These findings support the JD-R model's claim that job demands and job resources initiate two psychological processes, which eventually affect organizational outcomes http://repub.eur.nl/res/pub/1172/ 2004-01-20T00:00:00Z We study how salespeople cope with sales call anxiety and find that two tactics ultimately reduce dysfunctional protective actions in selling interactions. That is, situation modification and attentional deployment both moderate the effects of felt physiological sensations and anxiety on protective actions. http://repub.eur.nl/res/pub/1174/ 2004-01-20T00:00:00Z We define emotional competence as a person’s domain-specific working model about how one can appropriately manage one’s emotions within interpersonal situations. Emotional competence is conceived as the integration of seven seemingly unrelated proficiencies: perspective taking, strategic self-presentation of emotions, helping targets of communication accept one’s genuine emotional reactions, lack of guilt when using emotions strategically, fostering self-authenticity, developing an ironic perspective, and incorporating one’s moral code into the self-regulation of emotions. A cluster analysis of responses to measures of the seven proficiencies by 220 salespeople revealed four distinct groups of people. The groups were defined by emotional competence syndromes consisting of combinations of different levels of the seven proficiencies. One group, the highly emotional competent, scored high on all seven proficiencies, a second group scored low on all seven. Two other groups resulted wherein one group was dominated by feelings of guilt in the use of emotions strategically, and the second was characterized by the inability to accept ambiguous and contradictory situations by assuming an ironic perspective. In a test of predictive validity, the highly emotional competent group, but not the others, coped effectively with envy and pride, achieved high social capital, and performed well. http://repub.eur.nl/res/pub/1166/ 2004-01-19T00:00:00Z Account managers invest in two distinct, compensatory social ties to achieve social capital, namely peripheral knowledge ties and implementation support ties. The first ties require communal investments, which consist of organizational citizenship behaviors and peripheral information sharing. The second ties require instrumental investments that encompass reciprocity norms and strategic information sharing. Hypotheses are tested on a sample of 164 account managers who sell financial products/services to large customers. The findings show that account managers invest in both ties to attain peripheral knowledge accretion and implementation support which in turn result in improved performance. http://repub.eur.nl/res/pub/1167/ 2004-01-19T00:00:00Z Study 1 investigates the beneficial effects of experiencing pride. Pride was found to have two different effects. First, it increases salespersons’ performance-related motivations. Specifically, it promotes adaptive selling strategies, greater effort, and self-efficacy. Secondly, it positively affects organizational citizenship behaviors. Study 2 takes an emotion-process point of view and compares excessive pride (hubris) with positive pride. The results show that salespeople are capable of self-regulating the expression of these emotions via anticipated feelings of fear, shame, and regret. Salespeople in other words are affected by their emotions, but they also are capable of controlling them to their advantage. http://repub.eur.nl/res/pub/12697/ 2003-09-01T00:00:00Z We investigate the role that embarrassment, a self-conscious emotion, plays within a selling context. First, we consider what SC-emotions in general are and whether embarrassment might have positive as well as negative impacts on selling behavior. Next, we examine how embarrassment differs from sales call anxiety (SCA). The results show that embarrassment is manifest as an awkward, abashed chagrin provoked either by what a salesperson does that is inappropriate (self-provoked embarrassment) or what a customer does that is inappropriate or offensive to a salesperson (customer-provoked embarrassment). Self- and customer-provoked embarrassment each induce distinct coping responses and both diminish adaptive resource utilization during interactions with customers; this in turn promotes avoidance of future contact with the customer (especially for customer-provoked embarrassment). Implications of the research for practitioners are discussed. http://repub.eur.nl/res/pub/12698/ 2003-04-01T00:00:00Z In this study, the authors investigated how salespeople within an interdependent-based culture (the Philippines) and an independent-based culture (the Netherlands) experience and self-regulate shame. Filipino and Dutch employees were found to experience shame as a consequence of customer actions in largely similar ways (i.e., for both, shame is a painful self-conscious emotion with unique physiological/ behavioral urges, self-focused attention, and felt threat to the core self) but have different responses to their felt shame. Specifically, shame is self-regulated dissimilarly in the 2 cultures and leads to opposite effects on performance, namely, enhanced customer relationship building and civic virtue and helping occur for Filipino employees, and diminished sales volume, communication effectiveness, and relationship building transpire for Dutch employees. The positive effects experienced by Filipino employees occur through direct responses to felt shame and as a result of adaptive resource utilization. The negative effects experienced by Dutch employees occur as a result of the dysfunctional (from the firm's point of view) discharge of protective actions. http://repub.eur.nl/res/pub/12684/ 2003-01-01T00:00:00Z Bedrijfskundige studie over het selecteren van klanten waarop de bedrijfsvoering aansluit. In zijn boek betoogt Willem Verbeke dat ondernemers hun producten niet aanpassen aan hun potentiële klanten, maar dat zij klanten selecteren die bij hun producten passen. Met deze visie benadert de auteur dus feitelijk de praktijk en stelt daarmee tegelijkertijd dat ondernemers hun eigen missie niet volgen. Immers, die behelst te allen tijde dat producten worden afgestemd op de wensen van de cliënt. De auteur geeft praktijkvoorbeelden en stelt daarbij dat het op deze manier selecteren wel degelijk succesvol kan zijn. Hij verstrekt vervolgens adviezen (aan accountmanagers) over het te volgen proces ten gunste van betere verkoopresultaten. Binnen dit kader komen onder andere ter sprake: de stijl van leidinggeven, emotionele competentie, vaardigheden, het penetreren van accounts enzovoort. Het boek bevat nogal wat 'professionele management begrippen', maar de schrijver geeft aan dat hij zich richt op topmanagers en key-accountmanagers. Gelet op de praktijk mag dit werk binnen het ruime kader van het ondernemerschap redelijk gedurfd worden genoemd. http://repub.eur.nl/res/pub/237/ 2002-10-22T00:00:00Z Transaction value analysis (TVA) integrates the concepts of resource heterogeneity and transaction cost economics into a single framework, which emphasizes both value creation and value claiming in firms' vertical integration decisions. Using a TVA perspective, we develop hypotheses to explain the firm's intent to outsource application services. A sample of 178 firms in the publishing and printing industry in The Netherlands is used to test the hypotheses. This paper finds that firms take both value-creation and value-claiming motivations into consideration, with value creation having on average a dominating impact, thus substantiating the TVA framework. However, we also find that if the risks of opportunism in outsourcing contracting are high, value creation becomes the less important factor in make-or-buy decisions. Furthermore, the paper shows that the need for flexibility is a major driver of governance choice for value-creation as well as for value-claiming motivations. Implications and future research directions are discussed. http://repub.eur.nl/res/pub/12717/ 2002-09-01T00:00:00Z The goal of this article is to explore the role that shame and embarrassment play within an organization boundary-spanning context. For a sample of 458 salespeople selling financial services, measures are developed and hypotheses are tested concerning the effects of shame and embarrassment. The results suggest that the tendency to experience shame and embarrassment in personal selling leads to protective reactions (e.g., avoidance behaviors), and these, in turn, negatively impact performance (e.g., sales volume and quality of sales interaction). Hypotheses are tested on fitting and validation samples, both for salespeople focusing on prospecting tasks and salespeople focusing on relationship building. http://repub.eur.nl/res/pub/12706/ 2001-01-01T00:00:00Z Market analysts and marketing strategists stress understanding the fundamental dynamics of a market, but how deeply do they think about the interplay of such fundamentals and what frameworks do they use in such thinking? How do business schools teach managers to think this way? The premise of this article is that in their strategizing, senior marketing executives, boards of directors, consultants, and financial analysts should see the market and the firm’s embeddedness in a market as a moving video rather than a static snapshot. The authors propose that what makes the video move are fundamental feedback effects that create the evolutionary paths that a market and a firm may travel. A taxonomy of systemic feedback regularities is presented with applications that demonstrate how the taxonomy and proposed soft mapping techniques can be used to construct dynamic mental models that help managers and consultants improve their dynamic strategic thinking and the strategic foresight of firms. http://repub.eur.nl/res/pub/12707/ 2000-01-01T00:00:00Z The goal of this study is to develop and test a conceptualization of sales call anxiety (SCA) on the basis of current insights from the cognitive approach to social anxiety. Sales call anxiety is an irrepressible fear of being negatively evaluated and rejected by a customer, and it is coupled with a desire to avoid undertaking specific functional actions in selling situations. The authors present and test a model of SCA in two selling situations known to have threatening consequences for salespeople: canvasing and closing. The authors find that SCA consists of four components: negative self-evaluations, negative evaluations from customers, awareness of physiological symptoms (e.g., a queasy stomach, shaky voice, blushing), and protective actions (e.g., avoiding eye contact, fiddling with the hands, shunning self-disclosures). The authors show that these dimensions are functions of negative affectivity and anxiety-provoking contextual cues and that they negatively influenced the performance of 189 mortgage salespeople. http://repub.eur.nl/res/pub/12708/ 2000-01-01T00:00:00Z The goal of this paper is to revise and extend the organizational practices (OP) scale as developed by Hofstede et al. (1990). Based upon a sample of 400 employees working in sales and service positions, the revised OP scale is put to the test for reliability and validity. Because of the impact of OP on the way the members of the organization behave, we believe that this revised OP scale can be a useful measurement tool for both academics and practitioners. http://repub.eur.nl/res/pub/12709/ 2000-01-01T00:00:00Z This study seeks to develop an in-store brand-extension commitment (ISBEC) scale. To accomplish this goal, consumers were questioned about the efforts they are willing to undertake when confronted with critical moments in the store concerning their favourite brand extension. Using exploratory factor analysis, seven dimensions of ISBEC efforts were discovered. A higher order factor analysis revealed two factors: switching brand extensions within the same brand and the commitment behaviours in favour of brand extensions. In addition, based upon these seven ISBEC effort dimensions, six clusters of consumers were discovered. In an era of ECR, where the manufacturer and the retailer seek to develop economically responsible category systems, insights into what consumers will do for their preferred brand extensions might provide them with some strategic insights. http://repub.eur.nl/res/pub/12687/ 1999-01-01T00:00:00Z Accountmanagement heeft vele dimensies. Waarom gaah bedrijven verder met klanten waar ze niets dan verlies aan lijden? Reputatie, ervaring, innovatief vermogen, management focus, marktkennis: allemaal mogelijk antwoorden. Accountmanagement heeft praktische recht toe recht aan aspecten. Maar gaat ook in op de problematieken van strategische accounts die misschien zelf niet winstgevend zijn maar wel essentieel voor de toekomst. Dat dit consequenties heeft voor de accountplannen is duidelijk. De auteurs zijn hoogleraar en consultant bij een adviesbureau. Een combinatie van abstractie en praktijk. Een interessant boek voor accountmanagers in dynamische en innovatieve markten waarin de beoordeling van de waarde van een klant niet afhangt van diens orderomvang. Een aanvulling voor commerciële beslissers. http://repub.eur.nl/res/pub/12710/ 1999-01-01T00:00:00Z Individual differences in autonomic feedback—the dispositional tendency to experience signs and symptoms of autonomic nervous system activity in response to positive and negative emotionally evocative stimuli—were hypothesized to relate to affective and behavioral job outcomes in occupations characterized by job stress because higher autonomic feedback would intensify reactions to emotional evocation. In a cross-sectional study of Dutch salespeople, individual differences in autonomic feedback were independent of role stress and yet were strongly and positively related to burnout and negatively related to extra-role performance and job satisfaction; they were also nonsignificantly and negatively related to in-role job performance. Further, when job stress was higher—high role stress or low managerial support—individual differences in autonomic feedback were more strongly related to burnout, especially emotional exhaustion. http://repub.eur.nl/res/pub/12711/ 1998-01-01T00:00:00Z The purpose of this paper is to discuss a simulation of marketing budgeting rules that is based on a simplified version of the market share attraction model. The budgeting rules are roughly equivalent to those that may be used in practice. The simulation illustrates the concept of path dependence in dynamic marketing systems and shows how it might result from decision rules potentially applied by marketers and retailers. Path dependence results from positive feedback in dynamic systems that imparts momentum to market choices. Where the potential for path dependence exists, there are implications for defining and measuring long-term effects of marketing decisions in a way that is meaningful to managers and researchers. In the simulations presented we show that limited retail assortments may contribute to path dependence when firms use either percentage-of-revenue rules or market learning experiments to set budgets. While other budgeting procedures (e.g., matching competition) may stabilize market share, this stability in the share dimension comes at the cost of instability for budgets and profits. http://repub.eur.nl/res/pub/12712/ 1998-01-01T00:00:00Z Developments within social and exact sciences take place because scientists engage in scientific practices that allow them to further expand and refine the scientific concepts within their scientific disciplines. There is disagreement among scientists as to what the essential practices are that allow scientific concepts within a scientific discipline to expand and evolve. One group looks at conceptual expansion as something that is being constrained by rational practices. Another group, however, suggests that conceptual expansion proceeds along the lines of 'everything goes'. The goal of this paper is to test whether scientific concepts expand in a rational way within the field of organizational behaviour. We will use organizational climate and culture as examples. The essence of this study consists of two core concepts: one within organizational climate and one within organizational culture. It appears that several conceptual variations are added around these core concepts. The variations are constrained by rational scientific practices. In other terms, there is evidence that the field of organizational behaviour develops rationally. http://repub.eur.nl/res/pub/12713/ 1998-01-01T00:00:00Z The consumer-products industry has introduced a growing number of brand extensions in the last few years. At the same time, retailers who set out to cut slower-selling brands allowed more shelf space to their private-label brands is this freedom of choice that enhances retailer power. The purpose of this study was to design an experiment which simulated O'Reilly's acid test of brand loyalty mentioned in the opening quote to this paper. By organizing a true out-of-stock experiment (OOS) of the consumers preferred brand, the article determines whether consumers were willing to "walk out of the store to buy [their preferred brand] elsewhere or switch to an alternative product". Insights into these behaviors might provide arguments that retailers use during negotiations with the manufacturer about shelf allocations. The data from this study showed that almost 45 percent of the consumers were not willing to switch brands when their preferred brand was OOS: they either switched stores or postponed the purchase. These OOS responses differed substantially per brand. http://repub.eur.nl/res/pub/12716/ 1997-01-01T00:00:00Z This article explores the emotional contagion hypothesis, proposed by Hatfield, Cacioppo, and Rapson (1994), in a sales context. Specifically, the emotional contagion hypothesis explains how the emotions of two people (e.g., salesperson and customer) during a conversation are transmitted from one to the other via facial cues, and that these emotions affect the outcome of that interaction. The emotional contagion hypothesis implies that there are definitive individual differences concerning whether someone is either sensitive to emotions from others or able to transmit his or her emotions onto others. This study explores whether these individual differences are assets or liabilities over the long term for salespersons in a sales organization. The data in this study show that a salesperson's ability to infect others with his or her emotions is an asset (because it can lead to higher performance). In addition, being sensitive to the emotions of others is an asset (it can also lead to better performance); at the same time it is a liability (because of the higher risk of burnout). This study further explores how emotionally sensitive salespersons develop burnout as a consequence of role stress, which then affects their performance. http://repub.eur.nl/res/pub/7826/ 1996-12-13T00:00:00Z Developments within social and exact sciences take place because scientists engage in scientific practices that allow them to further expand and refine the scientific concepts within their scientific disciplines. There is disagreement among scientists as to what the essential practices are that allow scientific concepts within a scientific discipline to expand and evolve. One group looks at conceptual expansion as something that is being constrained by rational practices. Another group however suggests that conceptual expansion proceeds along the lines of ‘everything goes.'The goal of this paper is to test whether scientific concepts expand in a rational way within the field of organizational behavior. We will use organizational climate and culture as examples. The essence of this study consists of two core concepts: one within organizational climate and one within organizational culture. It appears that several conceptual variations are added around these core concepts. The variations are constrained by rational scientific practices. In other terms, there is evidence that the field of organizational behavior develops rationally. http://repub.eur.nl/res/pub/12718/ 1996-01-01T00:00:00Z http://repub.eur.nl/res/pub/12719/ 1996-01-01T00:00:00Z Previous research and meta-analyses suggest that the influence of organizational variables on boundary role stress processes is weak and marginal. Using the emerging work in organizational practices and configurations, the authors reexamine this relationship by addressing three critical gaps: (1) conceptualizing organizational environment as a multidimensonal practices construct, (2) operationatizing the organizational environment as configurations or combinations of practices dimensions, and (3) testing for direct and moderating hypotheses. The results reveal that organizational practices matter significantly in boundary role stress processes. The findings show that procedural environments are dysfunctional because they engender higher levels of role stressors, reduce performance, and negatively affect the psychological well-being of boundary spanners. In contrast, the achievement and affective-oriented environments involve distinct trade-offs, because none is clearly superior. The authors discuss the theoretical implications for further research and provide recommendations for managerial practice. http://repub.eur.nl/res/pub/12720/ 1996-01-01T00:00:00Z Evaluates transportability of personal selling measures across cultural boundaries. Concept of measurement development; Emic and etic approaches to developing measures for cross-cultural applications; Cross-national dimensionality, reliability and construct validity of adaptive selling (ADAPTS) and customer-oriented selling (SOCO). http://repub.eur.nl/res/pub/12722/ 1994-01-01T00:00:00Z The nonlinear distribution and market share curve as well as the push and pull model developed by Farris et at. (1989) have been investigated in the Dutch detergent market. The total detergent market as well as some of its market segments were studied: the data supported the push and pull model. The data also revealed that the detergent market is characterized by a specific market share configuration: extensions of the top brands quickly gain maximum distribution which might explain their higher market share. Implications for marketing management and marketing theory are discussed. http://repub.eur.nl/res/pub/12723/ 1993-01-01T00:00:00Z In sales literature the role of personality traits in the prediction of salespeople's performance is a hot topic. This study, based upon an administered personality test, suggests that salespeople's personality traits — specifically, the ability to elicit information from others, to self-monitor during conversations, and to adapt during conversations — are good predictors of performance. http://repub.eur.nl/res/pub/12726/ 1992-06-01T00:00:00Z The paper analyses the advertising as power vs. advertising as information controversy as well as its recent empirical testing. It is stressed that this distinction focuses too much on the interaction between consumer and manufacturer while ignoring the retailer as an important stake-holder. To compensate for this lack, a complex marketing system perspective is introduced in which consumer, retailer, and manufacturer interact. However, these complex marketing systems might drift towards market equilibria which are against the consumer interests: that is, firmsmight lock out brands from the market by means of trade and sales promotions and then use advertising to protect their position. Consequently brands of better quality and/or innovative brands are barred from trade shelves. http://repub.eur.nl/res/pub/12724/ 1992-01-01T00:00:00Z In this paper the relationship between adaptive selling and organizational behavior is analysed. Specifically, it is discovered that adaptive behavior is a multifaceted concept which is not linearly related to the organizational characteristics in the way it was operationalized in a former study by Sujan and Weitz. In order to gain a better insight into the functioning of adaptive selling within organizations, a different methodology is suggested. By means of more inductive research more detailed models should be generated, which then can be tested for robustness with a more deductive approach. Concept creation should have a more empirical foundation before concepts are entered into a theoretical network. http://repub.eur.nl/res/pub/12725/ 1992-01-01T00:00:00Z Anderson's (1983) theory about children's attention behavior during television viewing hypothesizes that attention behavior is affected by positive feedback (the inertia hypothesis) and the degree to which a child understands the television program. During an experiment, neither component of Anderson's theory was upheld. To test the attentional inertia and the understanding-and-looking hypothesis, video presentations were shown to children, and their attention behavior was coded. It was found that children's attention behavior is patterned and stable over time; children either have short or long attention spans. It is concluded that viewing behavior is shaped by an individual attention managing style or individual viewing style, which might be innate to individual children. Among the implications for advertisers is the fact it is possible that viewers look back and forth at commercials without either lowering or raising the probability of terminating or resuming their attention. http://repub.eur.nl/res/pub/12727/ 1992-01-01T00:00:00Z Willem Verbeke and Andy Mosmans have undertaken a large survey of Dutch companies focusing on how effectively advertising and marketing communications compaigns are implemented. Their interesting results show, among other things, the extensive involvement of top management in advertising policy, that creative advertising copy is subject to little testing by managers, and that companies evaluate advertising agencies on the basis of supplying creative products. The authors conclude generally that managers use advertising less than would be expected in their marketing campaigns.