Bahar Ashnai

Complaint resolution management expectations in an asymmetric business-to-business context

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to gain a deeper understanding of the attributes of effective complaint management in business‐to‐business relationships, and to reveal the underlying benefits that buying organizations are looking for when complaining.Design/methodology/approach – A semi‐standardized qualitative technique called laddering was applied successfully to an online environment with 22 representatives of companies in the manufacturing industry participating.Findings – The resulting hierarchical value map displays 13 attributes which exemplify the complaint resolution management expectations. A total of 14 constructs represent consequences of such resolution activities, while four constructs can be interpreted as values. Take “Quick action” is the most important of the expected attributes and behaviours of complaint resolution management. Four consequences seem to dominate the assessment: Financial benefits, Prevention of future problems, Solution, and Effective resolution handling. “Mainta...

A Cross-Cultural Comparison of Business Complaint Management Expectations

This study explores the complaint management expectations of 72 British and 74 German organizational buyers using automated online means-end laddering and a Hierarchical Value Map presentation. It conceptualizes the links between expected complaint resolution attributes by the buyer (i.e., means) and the buyer’s value perceptions (i.e., ends). Unlike previous research, we highlight similarities and differences in the drivers behind and attributes of complaint management expectations across two countries (Germany and the United Kingdom). Even in countries appearing to be similar economically and culturally, we find differences in the desired attributes. British buyers, for example, emphasize softer complaint resolution attributes compared to Germans. Our study is the first to present a model of complaint management expectations incorporating the role of culture, and it provides managerial directions on standardization and adaption of complaint resolution attributes. Furthermore, it evaluates justice dimensions (especially interactional justice) and their impact on perceptions of complaint management.

Sales Role-Plays and Mock Interviews: An Investigation of Student Performance in Sales Competitions

Sales competitions provide students with opportunities to apply their understanding of sales. Despite a long tradition of scholarship on sales role-plays, the answer to what drives student performance in sales competitions remains elusive. In this research, we examine how motivation (work engagement) and ability (cognitive aptitude and selling-related knowledge) affect student performance in sales role-play competitions. We also examine how success in sales role-plays engenders job attainment for the students. Using data from a sales competition held at a large public university in the United States, we provide empirical evidence that both motivation and ability affect sales performance. But, contrary to expectation, they have a substitution effect and not a complementary one. We also find evidence that success in sales role-plays translates into improved success in job interviews and that this effect is stronger for students with greater cognitive aptitude, that is, sales role-play performance complements the cognitive aptitude of the student to improve their mock interview performance.

Stock Market and Network Influence on Alliance Formation: Evidence from the Biopharmaceutical Industry

In this article we posit that firms signal resource availability (stock returns and risk) and favorable reputation (network of ties) to attract alliance partners. We use stock market and network characteristics to predict a firms’ propensity to engage in product alliances. Using 1,877 observations of 302 biopharmaceutical firms over a twenty-year period, we find that increase in stock returns and a decrease in stock risk is associated with an increase in firms’ product alliances. The position of the firm in its network improves product alliance formation, whereas the structure of the overall network (density) has no such effect.

Understanding Conditions of Sales Force Frustration

This article attempts to advance the personal selling and sales management literature by analyzing the negative consequences that may emanate from salespeople’s daily work experiences. The overall purpose of this article is to detect holistic workplace conditions, which result in frustration experiences in the sales force. Frustration is associated with an emotional reaction caused by an event or situation that interferes with an individual’s ability to accomplish his or her day-to-day duties effectively (Keenan and Newton 1984; Spector 1999). Drawing on role theory and social identity theory, and based on previous empirical research on sales management, we focus on two major sets of factors when seeking to explain conditions resulting in frustration in the sales force. Specifically, the objective of this article is to examine how salespeople’s perceptions of role stress (Singh et al. 1994), that is, role conflict, role ambiguity and role overload, and social conflict (Spector 1987), that is, intragroup conflict, intergroup conflict, and supervisor conflict, influence the development of frustration in the workplace.

Drivers of Inter-organizational Trust in Buyer-Seller Relationships: A fsQCA Analysis

Inter-organizational trust is a key characteristic of buyer-seller relationships (Handfield and Bechtel 2002; Kwon and Suh 2004). This paper investigates the drivers of buyer and seller inter-organizational trust. Previous studies have attempted to investigate the drivers of inter-organizational trust. However, these studies are dominantly based on monadic data collection. Furthermore, most of these studies base their research designs on either traditional case analysis, or use correlation-based statistical techniques to test the suggested antecedents. The former approach relies on very small sample sizes, which does not provide the basis for generating generalizeable conclusions. The latter approach neglects and overlooks identifying equifinal configurations and distinguishing between necessary and sufficient conditions driving buyer-seller relationship outcomes. This study addresses these shortcomings. This is done by using fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA). FsQCA is fundamentally set-theoretic and uses Boolean algebra to compare qualitatively evaluated attributes of social phenomena (Ragin 2000; Fiss 2007). We include relationship-specific investments (RSI), the role of inter-personal trust, the perception of the business partner’s opportunistic behavior, as well as outcomes of the relationship as conditions driving inter-organizational trust. We use a dyadic research design, which allows for an examination of configurations of important conditions of buyer’s as well as seller’s inter-organizational trust with data collected from the pertinent party.

Blind Judgment at First Sight: Trusting Physicians from Their Attire

Although physician appearance has been a topic of discussion in the medical literature for many years, less research has been performed on this topic from a service marketing point of view by considering patients as “consumers” and physicians as their “service providers”. The present study extends existing literature to a Middle Eastern context and focuses on investigating the possible effects of cultural artifacts on patient preferences in Iran. Research was conducted in the waiting room of a private medical laboratory located in the north center of Tehran and data collected using a patient-completed survey. Five hundred patients viewed photographs of either a young or old doctor in a variety of outfits before responding. Results indicate preference for formal attire, with the majority of respondents choosing professional dress consisting of a white coat with necktie. The paper closes with discussion of the results, managerial implications, and directions for further research.

Dyadic Operationalization in Business Marketing

This paper provides an overview of different ways of using dyadic operationalizations. Using a dataset from the Russian manufacturing industry, we test a monadic versus an internal dyadic data. This research opens up more meaningful quantitative work by enriching the often limited focal company perspective of research on business relationships.