Timo Arvid Kaski, Pia Hautamaki, Ellen Bolman Pullins and Heidi Kock
The purpose of this paper to explore the value creation expectations of salespeople and buyers for initial sales meetings and to investigate how such expectations align.
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper to explore the value creation expectations of salespeople and buyers for initial sales meetings and to investigate how such expectations align.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors applied expectancy disconfirmation theory and conducted a qualitative study among 12 B2B service salespeople and 12 buyers. The data includes 46 in-depth interviews collected during 2 separate interview rounds.
Findings
The authors discovered that buyers’ and sellers’ expectations differ and that buyers’ expectations are not reasonably satisfied. Buyers expect more business acumen, innovativeness, future orientation, long-term relationships and responsiveness to their specific situation from sellers. As salespeople´s salespeople´s expectations to create value for customers primarily stem from the solutions they sell as well as from their personal skills and behavior, there is need for sellers to focus on the gaps indicated in this study.
Research limitations/implications
The paper introduces expectancy disconfirmation theory to the B2B buyer-seller literature.
Practical implications
Identifying where expectations are being met and where they are being negatively disconfirmed can assist in hiring and training salespeople who are better able to meet, or exceed, buyer expectations.
Originality/value
The authors believe that these findings can benefit sales organizations in how they create value with new customers and how salespeople can align their actions with customers more effectively.
Details
Keywords
Bert Paesbrugghe, Johanna Vuori and Heidi Kock
Based on insights from the buying process, the purpose of this study is to align selling firms to the buyer’s efficiency needs that are grounded on the different types of…
Abstract
Purpose
Based on insights from the buying process, the purpose of this study is to align selling firms to the buyer’s efficiency needs that are grounded on the different types of purchases.
Design/methodology/approach
Using thematic analysis, this study conducted 35 in-depth interviews with business-to-business buyers and salespeople on the changing buyers’ sourcing needs.
Findings
In line with buyer enablement, buyers prefer personal selling when they perceive the sales offer as highly risky for the buying organization, whereas they have a strong preference for a direct marketing approach by the selling firm when they are purchasing low-risk purchases.
Research limitations/implications
This paper is a qualitative study. Future research should collect secondary company data to validate the results.
Practical implications
This paper addresses the buyer’s sourcing needs and presents how direct marketing channels and personal selling should be balanced to increase the return on salesforce resources.
Originality/value
This is one of the first studies to examine how sales organizations can create value by facilitating the buying process. Depending on the buyer’s categorization of the sales offer, this study highlights how a choice between direct marketing or personal selling improves the buyer’s perception of the sales organization.
Details
Keywords
The purpose of this paper was to explore the development of the professional identity of South African intern psychologists during the COVID-19 pandemic. This paper – that…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper was to explore the development of the professional identity of South African intern psychologists during the COVID-19 pandemic. This paper – that presents a historical reflection borne from a significant moment in time – aimed to capture what the authors can learn from this specific cohort of intern psychologists and their experiences of work-based learning.
Design/methodology/approach
Through the lens of the interpretative phenomenological approach, the authors analysed seven semi-structured interviews. Data analysis involved a line-by-line analysis of each individual transcript, where after a thorough, in-depth analysis was conducted across all the cases.
Findings
Against the background of the COVID-19 pandemic, the findings demonstrated the interns' initial uncertainties, severe exhaustion, perceived gaps in their training, and resilience despite unusual and difficult circumstances in their WBL internship.
Research limitations
The study was limited to seven intern psychologists in South Africa.
Practical implications
The findings suggest that support – during and after the COVID-19 pandemic – is crucial throughout the training of psychologists and means to facilitate and develop professional identity and resilience. This will provide the opportunity to safeguard emerging healthcare professionals from burnout while simultaneously advocating for supportive WBL and continual professional development spaces protecting healthcare professionals and the public.
Originality/value
With this article, we explored the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the professional identity development of intern psychologists (psychologists in training). The authors expand on the aforementioned original contribution, since the authors situate their research within the Global South. More specifically, the authors explored how intern psychologists' developed their professional identities against the backdrop of a largely resource-scarce context of South Africa.
Details
Keywords
Heidi Marja Rasila and Nils Florian Gersberg
The purpose of this paper is to assess service quality of outsourced facility maintenance services (FMS) from end‐user perspective. For this purpose, a two‐dimensional model for…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to assess service quality of outsourced facility maintenance services (FMS) from end‐user perspective. For this purpose, a two‐dimensional model for service quality in a FMS context is presented.
Design/methodology/approach
This paper is based on interviews in case study organizations.
Findings
The findings suggest that FMS quality may be divided into two industry‐specific dimensions – service recovery quality (response to a service failure) and observed maintenance quality (technical outcome). It seems that the main quality problems are linked to service recovery quality. These problems are caused by personalities of service personnel and lack of communication between end‐users and the service provider.
Practical implications
For FMS providers and building owners it is important to understand the nature of end‐user perceived FMS quality formation. This makes it possible to assess the service provision and to improve the performance of FMS if necessary. If the service recovery processes and observed maintenance quality are not understood well, the improvements may be directed to the wrong processes.
Originality/value
The quality of outsourced FMS is important for employers, employees, building owners and FMS providers. Still, there is very little research on end‐user perceived FMS quality. This paper creates a basis for further research on this important topic.
Details
Keywords
José Arias-Pérez, Nelson Lozada and Edwin Henao-García
This paper aims to analyze the moderating effect of knowledge leakage on the relationship between absorptive capacity and co-innovation, which implies collaborative work and…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to analyze the moderating effect of knowledge leakage on the relationship between absorptive capacity and co-innovation, which implies collaborative work and knowledge exchange with external actors on virtual innovation platforms.
Design/methodology/approach
The research model was tested in a sample of companies through the use of structural equations by the partial least squares method.
Findings
The results confirm that absorptive capacity is a prior condition for co-innovation. However, the most interesting and surprising result has to do with knowledge leakage, which actually has a negative moderating effect, but whose size is modest, which dismisses the great damages that such leakage could generate.
Originality/value
This study is pioneering in analyzing knowledge leakage in the context of virtual innovation platforms, which occurs in a different manner as compared to leakage in the context of collaborative research and development, widely analyzed in the literature. However, the main contribution of the paper lies in the fact that the results evidence the existence of an intermediate position between the traditional approach that insists on demonstrating the devastating consequences of the leakage and the emerging approach that dismisses these negative repercussions and conceives leakage as a positive organizational phenomenon, natural and inherent to the interaction of the firm with the environment. The results also contradict recent empirical evidence that completely dismisses the negative repercussions of knowledge leakage in contexts where incremental innovations prevail.