Besides the mainstream discussion around customer expectation, this study aims to review would customer surprise be influential in up- and cross-selling. Although hotel customers…
Abstract
Purpose
Besides the mainstream discussion around customer expectation, this study aims to review would customer surprise be influential in up- and cross-selling. Although hotel customers are becoming more used to robotic services, due to a negative impression of the robot’s lack of warmth, other customers still prefer the human-to-human services. Thus, what happens when up- and cross-selling are delivered by a robot versus human salesperson?
Design/methodology/approach
This study designs three experiments to investigate how guests would be surprised by a human or robot salesperson when checking in following a scenario of up- and cross-selling. This paper has three studies and data were collected through an online survey with the United States residents (n = 270).
Findings
This study validates that when up- and cross-selling are conducted separately, a human salesperson performs a better job in terms of achieving higher customer surprise, satisfaction, perceived value and reuse intention. When promoting both up- and cross-selling together, a robot salesperson has a more competitive performance in all examined measures.
Research limitations/implications
This study contributes elucidations on a theoretical conception of Appraisal Tendency Framework and extends the idiomatic impression that humans are more favorable than robots when an intensive personal interaction is involved.
Practical implications
This study inspires hospitality practitioners an optimal strategy in adopting human or robot employees for up- and cross-selling. Suggestions for marketing management and service operation with analytical methods are elucidated.
Originality/value
This study not just fills all indicated knowledge voids but proffers theoretical and practical insights.
研究目的
除了主流关于客户期望的讨论, 本研究探讨了客户惊喜在升级销售和交叉销售中的影响。尽管酒店客户逐渐适应机器人服务, 但由于对机器人缺乏温暖的负面印象, 仍有部分客户更倾向于人与人的服务。那么, 当升级销售和交叉销售由机器人和人类销售人员分别执行时, 会发生什么?
研究方法
本研究设计了三个实验, 通过场景模拟升级销售与交叉销售, 考察客户在入住办理时对人类或机器人销售人员的惊喜反应。数据通过在线调查收集, 共有270名美国居民参与。
研究发现
研究验证了以下结果: 当升级销售和交叉销售分别进行时, 人类销售人员在客户惊喜、满意度、感知价值以及再次使用意愿等方面表现更佳; 当同时推广升级销售与交叉销售时, 机器人销售人员在所有衡量指标上表现更具竞争力。
研究意义
本研究对情绪评估倾向框架(Appraisal Tendency Framework)提供了理论上的阐释, 并扩展了在密集的个人互动中人类比机器人更受欢迎的传统印象。
实践意义
本研究为酒店从业者在采用人类或机器人员工进行升级销售与交叉销售方面提供了优化策略, 并对营销管理与服务运营提出了分析方法上的建议。
研究创新
本研究不仅填补了相关领域的知识空白, 还在理论和实践层面提供了重要的见解。
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Hsuan-Hsuan Ku and Chih-Yun Huang
The purpose of this paper is to investigate consumers’ responses to unsolicited cross-selling of supplementary paid-for services made during delivery of a core service, and the…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to investigate consumers’ responses to unsolicited cross-selling of supplementary paid-for services made during delivery of a core service, and the contextual and personal variables moderating those responses.
Design/methodology/approach
Three formal experiments test the effect on participants’ responses of the perceived relevance of the supplementary service to the core service, personal psychological reactance, in the case of a high-relevance supplementary service, and self-monitoring, in scenarios in which a low-relevance supplementary service is proposed either in public or privately.
Findings
The experiments found that participants’ satisfaction ratings were reduced in response to cross-selling of a supplementary service that was of low relevance to the core service, and that satisfaction ratings if it was perceived to be of high relevance compared were not reduced despite the unsolicited attempt at cross-selling. However, the non-negative response to a high-relevance offer was limited to participants with a lower tendency to reactance. Furthermore, a high predisposition to self-monitoring evoked more positive judgments if a low-relevance supplementary service was proposed in public rather than privately. That of low self-monitors was no different in either case.
Originality/value
This paper examines the trade-off faced by a service provider between customer satisfaction and extra revenue from supplementary services, and explores conditions under which a provider can propose unsolicited supplementary services without offending customers.
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With increasing market competition, enterprises have come to realize that it is easier to maximize profit by cross‐selling services to existing customers than to attract new…
Abstract
Purpose
With increasing market competition, enterprises have come to realize that it is easier to maximize profit by cross‐selling services to existing customers than to attract new customers. It can often be observed that consumers sequentially purchase multiple products and services from the same provider. Accordingly, this commonly observed situation offers huge opportunities for companies carrying multiple products and services to “cross‐sell” other products and services to their existing customer group. The purpose of this paper is to find out a convenient way to identify the customers with cross‐selling potential.
Design/methodology/approach
In this paper, the authors investigate the customer demographic data, including age, income, gender and educational level, and study the relation between the variables and the customers' cross‐selling potential based on counter propagation network (CPN).
Findings
The authors set up a cross‐selling model successfully. After inputting age, gender, education level, and income into the input layer of the model, the model will show us which products the potential customers should buy in the output layer. This process can provide useful information for the enterprise to persuade the customers into buying the unpurchased products and provide the products to the right customer.
Originality/value
In this paper, the authors set up the cross‐selling model based on the CPN. The model can predict the customer cross‐selling potential successfully according to the customer demography data – age, income, gender, and educational level.
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Ting Yu, Ko de Ruyter, Paul Patterson and Ching-Fu Chen
This study aims to explore the formation and consequences of a cross-selling initiative climate, as well as how a service climate, which provides an important boundary condition…
Abstract
Purpose
This study aims to explore the formation and consequences of a cross-selling initiative climate, as well as how a service climate, which provides an important boundary condition, affects both its formation and its ultimate impact on service-sales performance. This article identifies two important predictors of a cross-selling initiative climate: frontline employees’ perceptions of supervisors’ bottom-line mentality and their own sense of accountability.
Design/methodology/approach
The multilevel data set includes 180 frontline staff and supervisors (team leaders) from 31 teams employed by a spa/beauty salon chain. Hierarchical linear modelling and partial least squares methods serve to analyse the data.
Findings
Supervisors’ bottom-line mentality disrupts a cross-selling initiative climate. A sense of accountability exerts a positive impact at both individual and team levels. A service climate at the team level weakens the impact of a sense of accountability on a cross-selling initiative climate. A cross-selling initiative climate has a positive effect on team-level service-sales performance, but this effect is weakened by the service climate.
Originality/value
This study conceptualises an important frontline work unit attribute as a climate. It offers an initial argument that a cross-selling initiative climate is a central factor driving a work unit’s service-sales performance, which can increase firms’ productivity and competitive advantages. With this initial attempt to explore the antecedents and consequences of a cross-selling initiative climate, the study also offers novel insights into the interplay between a service and a cross-selling initiative climate.
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HsiuJu Rebecca Yen, Paul Jen-Hwa Hu and Yi-Chun Liao
This study aims to examine how a manager’s learning goal orientation (LGO) influences frontline service employees’ (FSEs’) engagement in cross-selling activities. Such engagements…
Abstract
Purpose
This study aims to examine how a manager’s learning goal orientation (LGO) influences frontline service employees’ (FSEs’) engagement in cross-selling activities. Such engagements must exist before they can achieve service–sales ambidexterity. Drawing on achievement goal theory and the meaning-making perspective, this study predicts that learning-oriented managers encourage and foster FSEs’ cross-selling behaviors by facilitating their ability to derive positive meaning from the cross-selling initiative. They do so by conveying high-quality information about the initiative and related changes to individual employees, as well as by encouraging the formation of a collective perception of open communications within the work unit.
Design/methodology/approach
Hierarchical (nested) data from 39 managers and 357 FSEs of a major logistic service company are used to test the hypotheses.
Findings
As predicted, a manager’s LGO relates positively to FSEs’ cross-selling activities, through sequential mediations of the hypothesized communication mechanisms and employees’ benefits-finding.
Originality/value
A manager’s LGO is an important antecedent of FSEs’ cross-selling behaviors. This study establishes this influence and clarifies the processes by which it occurs. This study also extends previous research by specifying the important role of employees’ meaning-making, which prompts them to adopt cross-selling, as a mediator of the multilevel communication influences that result from their managers’ LGO.
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Irinja Mäenpää and Raimo Voutilainen
The purpose of this paper is to investigate how financial service providers cross‐sell combined bank and insurance service offerings in a business‐to‐business context with the aim…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to investigate how financial service providers cross‐sell combined bank and insurance service offerings in a business‐to‐business context with the aim of increasing understanding on the creation of corporate customer value through cross‐selling.
Design/methodology/approach
A qualitative study of eight providers, augmented with interviews among eight of their small and medium‐sized enterprise (SME) customers, form the empirical basis of the study.
Findings
Financial service providers anticipate a shift from separate sales events towards one‐stop shopping and from unilateral provision of non‐related products towards consideration of hybrid products in the SME segment. SME customers, who tend to acquire their banking and insurance services as non‐related products from separate providers, do not fully support these trends. The results are partly explained by the absence of customer loyalty programs and non‐existent provision of hybrid products in the business‐to‐business context.
Research limitations/implications
The research is focused on the financial industry within one country and bound to SME customers, limiting the generalizability of the findings.
Practical implications
The results imply that financial service providers should develop their one‐stop shopping concept in the SME segment by creating a customer loyalty program that would reward customer companies according to the use of multiple products in their total portfolio. Additionally, the possibilities of introducing hybrid products solely for business customer use should be further investigated.
Originality/value
This study is the first to show how business customers perceive the value of cross‐buying bank and insurance services, presenting a reminder to managers about the importance of recognizing their SME customers' value expectations.
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Junfeng Dong, Qiman Zhang, Haoyuan Teng, Li Jiang and Wenxing Lu
This paper aims to investigate the vertical cooperative relationship between the core enterprise and the manufacturer within the platform ecosystem, specifically analyzing the…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to investigate the vertical cooperative relationship between the core enterprise and the manufacturer within the platform ecosystem, specifically analyzing the optimal decision-making processes of both parties under the original equipment manufacturer (OEM) and original brand manufacturer (OBM) modes.
Design/methodology/approach
This paper uses game theory to analyze the problem, considering factors such as brand value difference, cross-selling and platform empowerment. It constructs the game models for both OEM and OBM modes and discusses the selection strategies for the cooperation mode.
Findings
The results indicate that the choice of cooperation mode by the manufacturer and the core enterprise depends on the relative size of their brand values. In cases of inconsistent choices, cooperation can be improved by designing a transfer payment contract. When the brand value is constant, the product price is comprehensively affected by cross-selling revenue, price elasticity coefficient, cost coefficient of sales effort and cost coefficient of platform empowerment. The enterprise reduces the price only when the potential revenue brought by increasing product sales exceeds the marginal profit brought by increasing product pricing; otherwise, it raises the sales price.
Originality/value
The platform ecosystem is emerging as a future direction for business mode development. However, there is a paucity of research on the cooperation modes between manufacturers and core enterprises within the platform ecosystem.
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Guoyin Jiang, Shan Liu, Wenping Liu and Yan Xu
Social media facilitates consumer exchanges on product opinions and provides comprehensive knowledge of online products. The interaction between consumers and e-retailers evolves…
Abstract
Purpose
Social media facilitates consumer exchanges on product opinions and provides comprehensive knowledge of online products. The interaction between consumers and e-retailers evolves into a collective set of dynamics within a complex system. Agent-based modeling is well suited to stimulate such complex systems. The purpose of this paper is to integrate agent-based model and technique for order performance by similarity to ideal solution (TOPSIS) to simulate decision behaviors of e-retailers in competitive online markets.
Design/methodology/approach
An agent-based network model using the TOPSIS driven by actual price data is developed. The authors ran an experimental model to simulate interactions between online consumers and e-retailers and to record simulation data. A nonparametric test is used to conduct data analysis and evaluate the sensibility of parameters.
Findings
Simulation results showed that different profits could be obtained for various brands under different social network structures. E-retailers could achieve more profits through cross-selling than single-selling; however, the highest profits can be achieved when some adopt cross-selling, whereas others use single-selling. From a game perspective, the equilibrium for price-adjustment frequency can be determined from the simulation data. Thus, price adjustment differences significantly affect e-retailer profit.
Originality/value
This study provides new insights into the evolutionary dynamics of online markets. This work also indicates how to build an integrated simulation model with an agent-based model and TOPSIS and how to use an integrated simulation model and interpret its results.
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Kerry Mundt, John Dawes and Byron Sharp
Many service organisations seek to grow by selling additional different products to their existing customers. Many managers are evaluated on the level of customer loyalty in terms…
Abstract
Purpose
Many service organisations seek to grow by selling additional different products to their existing customers. Many managers are evaluated on the level of customer loyalty in terms of cross‐product holdings – for example, the average number of bank products or insurance policies held per customer. The purpose of this paper is to provide managers and researchers with some contextual knowledge and norms concerning “cross‐category” loyalty.
Design/methodology/approach
In order to compare the levels of loyalty for competing brands, five relevant loyalty metrics were used in the analysis, with data sourced from two service industries, banking and insurance.
Findings
The results show little variation in loyalty scores between competing brands, and what variation there is can be explained by historic factors, without reference to CRM strategies. This suggests that investments into CRM and cross‐selling initiatives seem to have less effect on loyalty metrics than many marketing textbooks and CRM advocates have assumed.
Practical implications
Marketers should be very cautious of setting ambitious goals for increasing loyalty to their brand at a cross‐category level.
Originality/value
Very few research papers have explored the issue of cross‐category loyalty. This is despite the value of the specific loyalty metrics as key performance indicators in service industries such as banking and insurance.
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Esther L. Kim and Sarah Tanford
Cross-selling becomes critical for business success as pent-up travel demand drives travelers to spend more on vacations. The primary purpose of this research is to identify if an…
Abstract
Purpose
Cross-selling becomes critical for business success as pent-up travel demand drives travelers to spend more on vacations. The primary purpose of this research is to identify if an unexpected discount leads to consumers' additional purchases online. This research proposes effective cross-selling strategies across hospitality sectors.
Design/methodology/approach
Two experiments were conducted to investigate factors that influence travelers' add-on spending. Study 1 determined the psychological mechanism of unexpected discounts on hotel customers' additional spending by individual thinking styles. A 2 (discount: none vs surprise) x 2 (thinking style: holistic vs analytic) quasi-experimental design was utilized. Study 2 applied the identified pricing strategy by individual thinking styles to cruise line add-on selling. A 2 (discount: none vs surprise) x 2 (product type: hedonic vs utilitarian) x 2 thinking style (holistic vs analytic) quasi-experiment was used.
Findings
The findings indicate that an unexpected discount increases holistic thinkers' overall travel spending, regardless of add-on types. Although the unexpected discount effect on analytic thinkers' overall spending was significant, an unexpected discount enhanced their intentions to purchase a hedonic add-on.
Practical implications
Hospitality operators can improve cross-selling strategies with a surprise discount offer. Offering add-on items in the same transaction with a cabin booking will increase add-on purchases. Hotels can make add-on purchases more appealing by emphasizing the experiential aspects of a hotel stay.
Originality/value
This research broadens knowledge of cross-selling by linking add-on purchases to discount pricing on a primary product. The findings provide new strategies to stimulate add-on purchases and maximize profitability.