Mark P. Leach, Rhett T. Epler and Sijun Wang
This paper aims to explore the usage of selling influence tactics across prospective customers with differing information-related needs.
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to explore the usage of selling influence tactics across prospective customers with differing information-related needs.
Design/methodology/approach
The research study uses an exploratory critical incident technique (CIT) methodology to identify and examine salesperson influence tactics.
Findings
This study identifies and explores the use of salesperson influence tactics across three information-based conditions often encountered by salespeople (i.e. information seeking customers, informed customers with information inaccuracies and informed customers making sub-optimal decisions). Regardless of condition, salespeople readily used non-coercive information exchange tactics. Whereas, recommendations and ingratiation tactics were applied by more effective salespeople when interacting with informed customers with information deficiencies. Furthermore, salespeople report executing less effectively with prospects with inaccurate preexisting information and with prospects making flawed or sub-optimal decisions.
Research limitations/implications
Findings illustrate the need for a renewed focus on salesperson influence tactics, the conditions under which they are effective, and how salespeople adapt their influence tactics to various situations. The exploratory nature of this study limits the generalizability of findings.
Practical implications
A framework of adaptive selling strategies is proposed to help tackle new challenges faced by B2B salespeople in today’s information intensive market. When interacting with more informed customers, pre-existing information is often inaccurate and incomplete. Thus, salespeople must assess and address these flaws and gaps and can adapt their influence strategies to do so effectively.
Originality/value
Industrial buyers today have virtually unlimited avenues to conduct extensive research and gain supplier information without the aid of interactions with salespeople. Thus, salespeople often enter sales interactions when their prospects have significantly more information than ever before. By examining salesperson influence techniques in selling situations that vary based on prospective customer preexisting knowledge, this research provides guidance on how selling may need to change in a more information intensive era.
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Wesley J. Johnston, Mark P. Leach and Annie H. Liu
Case research has typically been criticized as lacking objectivity and methodological rigor. It has, therefore, taken a back seat to more quantitative methods like survey and…
Abstract
Case research has typically been criticized as lacking objectivity and methodological rigor. It has, therefore, taken a back seat to more quantitative methods like survey and experimental methods when conducting business-to-business research. However, many of the issues of importance to business-to-business research take place in a rich and theoretically important context. When a phenomenon of interest takes place within a complex context, case research is often the most appropriate means to pursue investigation. Thus, in order to enhance the legitimacy of case research, a systematic case methodology is developed that addresses the traditional criticisms. Central to this method are three critical aspects. First, all research must begin with theory development. Second, the research design must be logical and systematic. Third, findings must be independently evaluated. By designing research projects around these aspects, case studies can provide marketers with one more tool to investigate business-to-business marketing, its processes, and the complex environment in which it operates. Specifically, case research is thought to be beneficial is studying network systems, international business-to-business marketing, and the industrial new product development processes.
Mark P. Leach, Luiz Mesquita and W. David Downey
Large agricultural producers often demand seed with high yielding genetics along with specialty traits specific to their particular needs. Dairyland Seed Company prides itself on…
Abstract
Large agricultural producers often demand seed with high yielding genetics along with specialty traits specific to their particular needs. Dairyland Seed Company prides itself on its superior genetics and a research program that adds specialty traits while retaining the qualities of the original variety. Dairyland sources specialty trait technology from two competing suppliers – DuPont and Monsanto. Each of these suppliers is currently pursuing a strategy of forward integration through aggressive marketing programs and acquisitions. The implications for access to future technologies and long‐term survival are profound, and leave Dairyland and other smaller seed companies with strategic decisions to make. This paper examines a channel of distribution for agricultural biotechnologies and the decisions faced by a small, reputable seed company when dealing with its large multinational biotechnology suppliers. Who should Dairyland be partnering with, and can Dairyland balance supplier dependency in an attempt to avoid being eliminated from the channel?
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Mukta Srivastava, Sreeram Sivaramakrishnan and Neeraj Pandey
The increased digital interactions in the B2B industry have enhanced the importance of customer engagement as a measure of firm performance. This study aims to map and analyze…
Abstract
Purpose
The increased digital interactions in the B2B industry have enhanced the importance of customer engagement as a measure of firm performance. This study aims to map and analyze temporal and spatial journeys for customer engagement in B2B markets from a bibliometric perspective.
Design/methodology/approach
The extant literature on customer engagement research in the B2B context was analyzed using bibliometric analysis. The citation analysis, keyword analysis, cluster analysis, three-field plot and bibliographic coupling were used to map the intellectual structure of customer engagement in B2B markets.
Findings
The research on customer engagement in the B2B context was studied more in western countries. The analysis suggests that customer engagement in B2B markets will take centre stage in the coming times as digital channels make it easier to track critical metrics besides other key factors. Issues like digital transformation, the use of artificial intelligence for virtual engagement, personalization, innovation and salesforce management by leveraging technology would be critical for improved B2B customer engagement.
Practical implications
The study provides a comprehensive reference to scholars working in this domain.
Originality/value
The study makes a pioneering effort to comprehensively analyze the vast corpus of literature on customer engagement in B2B markets for business insights.
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Michael Shachat, Fang Hong, Yijing Lin, Helena Syna Desivilya, Dalit Yassour-Borochowitz, Jacqui Akhurst, Mark M. Leach and Kathleen Malley-Morrison
This study aim to examine the themes of moral disengagement (MD) and engagement in reasoning regarding a putative governmental right to kill innocent civilians when fighting…
Abstract
Purpose
This study aim to examine the themes of moral disengagement (MD) and engagement in reasoning regarding a putative governmental right to kill innocent civilians when fighting terrorism.
Design/methodology/approach
In total, 147 participants from Israel, 101 from the USA and 80 from South Africa provided quantitative rating scale responses and qualitative explanations about such a putative right. Qualitative responses were coded for presence or absence of indices of MD and engagement.
Findings
In ANOVAs by gender and country, men scored higher than women on rating scale scores indicating support for the right; there were no significant national differences on these scores. Chi-square analyses with the coded qualitative responses indicated more men than women gave morally disengaged responses, proportionately more South Africans than Israelis provided morally disengaged responses and proportionately more South Africans and Americans than Israelis provided morally engaged responses. Pearson correlation analyses indicated that MD was positively correlated with rating scale scores and moral engagement was negatively related to rating scale scores in all three countries.
Research limitations/implications
Regarding limitations, it is difficult to know how the omission of qualitative explanations of rating scale responses by many participants influenced the statistical findings – or how to interpret the more restricted level of qualitative responses in Israel and South Africa as compared to the USA.
Social implications
Programs designed to counteract MD have the potential for helping reduce support for war and its inhumanities across diverse nations.
Originality/value
This is the first study on MD to compare American, Israeli and South African perspectives on the justifiability of human rights violations in the war on terror. The findings go beyond earlier studies in finding gender differences in MD that occurred across three very different nations in three very different parts of the world.
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Many of the difficulties that have been experienced by Health Authorities in this country in the examination of imported butcher's “offal”—using the term “offal” in its trade…
Abstract
Many of the difficulties that have been experienced by Health Authorities in this country in the examination of imported butcher's “offal”—using the term “offal” in its trade sense—would seem to have been due to injudicious methods of packing on the other side. The organs that constitute “offal”—livers, plucks, kidneys, sweetbreads, and so forth—have hitherto been closely packed into a bag, box, or crate, and the whole mass then frozen hard. Hence on arrival at the port of inspection the separate examination of these organs for possible disease conditions was rendered a matter of extreme difficulty. The exporters have now, it appears, almost all arranged for the separate freezing of the larger organs before packing, and in the case of smaller organs, such as kidneys and sweetbreads, some packers now make use of shallow boxes.
A social movement scene is “a network of people who share a set of subcultural or countercultural beliefs, values, norms, and convictions as well as a network of physical spaces…
Abstract
Purpose
A social movement scene is “a network of people who share a set of subcultural or countercultural beliefs, values, norms, and convictions as well as a network of physical spaces where members of that group are known to congregate” (Leach and Haunss 2009, p. 260, emphasis in the original). The purpose of this paper is to further develop theories of social movement scenes by examining the spatial dimensions of proximity, centrality, visibility, and accessibility, arguing that different scene configurations are shaped by gentrification processes.
Design/methodology/approach
This is an ethnographic study based on research conducted in Sweden over a five year period (2007-2012), including several summer research trips and a sustained fieldwork period of 14 months. Using snowball sampling, the author conducted semi-structured interviews with 38 activists involved in autonomous movement scenes. The author interviewed both men (n=26) and women (n=12) who ranged in age from 18 to 37, with most interviewees in their late 20s and early 30s.
Findings
Findings suggest that neighborhoods in the early stages of gentrification are most conducive to strong scenes. The author’s findings suggest that, while some of these conditions are locally specific, there were common structural conditions in each city, such as changes in the commercial landscape and housing tenure.
Originality/value
This paper contributes to the specificity of the concept of a social movement scene by presenting three spatial dimensions of scenes: centrality (relative to the Central Business District), concentration (clustering of scene places in one area of the city), and visibility (a visible presence communicated by signs and symbols). A second contribution of this paper is to offer a set of hypotheses about the urban conditions under which social movement scenes thrive (or fizzle).
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This paper outlines methods and results of wetting, leaching and adhesion analyses on copper thick film conductors over alumina and multilayer glasses after different processing…
Abstract
This paper outlines methods and results of wetting, leaching and adhesion analyses on copper thick film conductors over alumina and multilayer glasses after different processing conditions. The intention is to provide a better background for evaluating and optimising materials and processing conditions in copper thick films and working out quick, reliable and quantitative methods for better characterisation of copper conductors in production. For these reasons the following methods were used: (a) wetting and leaching analyses with a scanning wetting balance, working in nitrogen, (b) pull tests with solder contacts on copper thick film conductors after soldering, ageing and thermal cycling, and (c) some additional surface analyses (REM, EDX, Auger) for a better understanding of copper pastes and their material interactions, when processed under different conditions. The results are summarised under three general aspects: surface structure and wetting of copper thick films, wetting and leaching of various copper thick films after different processing conditions, and finally the influence of different wetting properties of such surfaces on the solder adhesion strength after soldering, ageing and thermal cycling. The results give good insight into the various interactions of copper thick films with their substrate materials and confirm the ability of the described wetting and leaching analyses for these purposes.