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This article has been withdrawn as it was published elsewhere and accidentally duplicated. The original article can be seen here: 10.1108/eb008123. When citing the article, please cite: Betsy D. Gelb, (1985), “HOW MARKETERS OF INTANGIBLES CAN RAISE THE ODDS FOR CONSUMER SATISFACTION”, Journal of Consumer Marketing, Vol. 2 Iss: 2, pp. 55 - 61.

This paper aims to examine technology-based firms that successfully turned around a decline in performance, to report what they did and what characterized the firms themselves, relating those actions and characteristics to effective rebounds.

The authors use published data, including financial data, to examine 59 successful rebounds, and then apply regression analyses to relate firm actions and characteristics to performance.

Strategic moves by these firms included layoffs, new products and new inter-company relationships. However, none of those actions predicted rebound success, either individually or in combination. Successful rebounds were associated only with smaller size and a deeper decline – from exceeding the industry performance median to falling far below it.

Technology firms may or may not represent all middle-aged companies in terms of authors’ implications, that a one-size-fits-all turnaround formula is unavailable.

Wise managers will therefore consider various scenarios to prepare for decline and test several if possible. Further, the finding that dramatic drops in performance are associated with successful rebounds should warn managers who think that a competitor’s major problems mean they will disappear; they may be likelier to rebound than a competitor experiencing only a mild performance decline.

Managers who think they have THE answer to decline can profit from the news that one cannot count on layoffs, on new products or on new relationships to turn around performance decline. And, the small-is-beautiful (for rebounds) result suggests rethinking the assumption that bigger is better and making organizational changes in large organizations to allow them to imitate the flexibility advantages that a smaller firm achieves.

This study aims to explore a previously unidentified antecedent of remaining in selling rather than leaving the field. That antecedent is “love of selling”: prioritizing intrinsic rewards over those that are extrinsic.

The differences between those with each of those priorities are explored here in a survey of 348 salespeople, both inside and outside, and also qualitative interviews with a 20-person subset.

Comparing salespeople who select on a questionnaire the option that they “love selling” vs respondents who primarily enjoy its payoffs, the authors find the former group significantly less likely to say they would leave the selling field if they could get another job that pays as well. They are significantly more likely to rate their own selling skills highly, but sales results between the two groups do not differ. Telephone interviews asking what their company does to reinforce love of selling, and what it could do, elicit comments on support – but also on administrative dissatisfiers.

Organizations benefit from encouraging a love of selling and can do so by training, by management efforts to build confidence, by emphasizing challenge and by reducing administrative barriers to enjoying the selling experience.

This is the first study to identify “love of selling” as a characteristic of salespeople that managers will want to understand and foster.

This study aims to investigate to what extent salespeople are satisfied, dissatisfied or neither with various aspects of their job in ways predicted by the “two-factor model” assocating satisfaction with recognition and personal growth but not “hygiene factors.” It further investigates which aspects of the salesperson’s job are most strongly associated with commitment to the organization – or intention to leave.

Interviewers gathered data from 176 salespeople in 154 companies. Those data were analyzed to identify aspects of the salesperson’s job that are satisfiers, dissatisfiers or prompt indifference. The data were then correlated with the extent to which salespeople expressed commitment to their organization – and the extent to which they expressed likelihood of leaving their current job.

Aspects of the salesperson’s job do cluster into categories associated with the two-factor theory: satisfiers, dissatisfiers and other “hygiene factors” that are neither. However, two deviations from the theory appear. Pay is a satisfier, contrary to the assumptions behind the model, and factors beyond those intrinsic to the salesperson are also satisfiers. Supporting relevance of the theory for salespeople, however, is the strong association of recognition/personal growth aspects of the job positively with organizational commitment and negatively with intention to leave.

Although the data come from a convenience sample of salespeople, the results can be useful. For example, consideration of new products and of mergers should take into account their impact on salesperson satisfaction and dissatisfaction as motivational issues.

This study is broader in focus than previous work relating the two-factor theory to salespeople, providing more confidence in the generalizability of the results.

The purpose of this paper is to offers the authors’ perspective on a problem rarely considered by those making strategic decisions: conflicting laws at different levels of jurisdiction, specifically those related to stigmatized products.

The authors use as examples of product categories from marijuana to single-use plastic bags, describing the conflicting laws that add to costs for marketers and consumers.

The authors find that conflicting laws add to the uncertainty, legal expenses, and therefore, the cost of marketing a stigmatized product, whether stigmatized because of its impact on the environment, on health or on moral grounds.

The examples are not exhaustive, but their implications are significant: that as state legislatures are preempting local bans, Congress may preempt state laws.

This paper adds one more complexity to decision-making in the area of products to offer and/or merger/acquisition decisions that may bring company products that face conflicting laws.

Organizational leaders understandably seek to match their workforce to the organization’s strategic focus. However, they may find their ability to do so thwarted by reluctance to retire, even by those financially able to do so, based on the stigma that retirement means “old” and “out to pasture.” The purpose of this paper is to learn what can be done to overcome that possible barrier to implementing a strategic direction.

The authors interviewed 12 human resources executives across the USA concerning the challenge of reducing the stigma associated with retirement. The qualitative study involved conversations that focused on “what does your organization do?” rather than testing a specific hypothesis.

Respondents talked about actions ranging from the image-related to the substantive, practiced in both for-profit and non-profit settings. Organizations can position retirement as a transition to something else, and therefore a career stage rather than its end.

Organizational leaders can communicate that retirement is not a career end but a stage of work-life that can pay off in increasing flexibility for employees as well as for the organization itself.

While strategic flexibility benefits organizations, a societal benefit can be more satisfied retirees if they transition to education, volunteer leadership or entrepreneurship.

The value of this research lies in prompting those at the highest level in organizations, those who design strategy, to consider how its implementation can be improved by actions to affect the retirement perspectives of employees.

In a globalized world, consumers embrace mutually conflicting cultural values rather than making exclusive, either/or choices. As a result, they experience multiple tensions, a phenomenon that can be identified as the consumer cultural paradox. Despite clear interest in the influence of local/global culture on consumers, knowledge of how conflicting cultural elements shape consumer behavior remains limited. To address these issues, the current article seeks to identify higher- and lower-level tensions inherent in the consumer cultural paradox.

Using in-depth interviews, the authors investigate tensions experienced by Chinese consumers of international private education services. This study applies a paradox lens, a tension-based conceptual approach that is well suited for studying consumer paradoxes.

Ten lower-level tensions of the consumer cultural paradox arise in the focal international service context; these tensions in turn form three higher-level tensions.

The study is among the first in marketing to use a paradox lens and empirical research to delineate multiple dimensions of the consumer cultural paradox, then categorize them into lower and higher-level tensions. The findings offer theoretical and managerial implications, in that recognizing the multiple tensions experienced by consumers allows scholars and marketers to gain a better understanding of how consumers perceive and evaluate services from different cultures.

Herzberg's theory of worker satisfaction suggests that while the context of a job may cause dissatisfaction, the basic factor behind positive satisfaction is the content of that job — the pleasure of achievement. There is evidence that in some situations the same kind of dichotomy might apply to consumer satisfaction: that is, consumers may be dissatisfied by the setting, or peripheral factors surrounding goods or services, but the likeliest route to positive satisfaction is to let them accomplish something with their purchase. This idea can applied specifically to services.

Retailer bankruptcy provides an opportunity for studying the relationships among members of a channel of distribution because bankruptcy disturbs the ongoing pattern of such relationships. This study employs qualitative research to model the criteria that suppliers use in selecting their response to a bankrupt retailer. Results show that suppliers who continue cooperative behavior with a retailer employ a model that assesses whether the risks in continuing to supply that retailer are in balance with the outcomes generated from the relationship. However, behavioral variables appear relevant as well: retailers appear to benefit from adopting a collaborative communication strategy and building supplier confidence so that a turnaround will in fact occur.

The disadvantaged competitor in a declining industry is exemplified by the small, private liberal arts college. Thus, marketing successes among such colleges are the exception — and worth examining. The author concludes from an informal study that those who succeed do so by using a “focus” strategy and by employing unusual efforts to involve in the buying process others beyond the conventional purchaser. Examples are offered of how other organizations who market “against the odds” might apply parallel approaches.