Beth A. Walker

A Cup of Coffee With a Dash of Love An Investigation of Commercial Social Support and Third-Place Attachment

This study introduces theory about how deficits in social support motivate consumers to replace lost social resources by forming relationships with customers and employees in commercial “third places.” The authors demonstrate support for a multiple-indicator, multiple-cause model that illustrates how six common events that destroy or erode a persons social support can cause the person to obtain emotional support and companionship in a third place. The model supports the linkage between commercial social support and a consumers sense of attachment to a third place that harbors his or her social support network. The authors also propose and test hypotheses that reveal that consumers obtain social support in a third place to the extent to which they lost it outside the place. In essence, third-place patrons match their lost support to their commercial support, thus remedying negative symptoms associated with isolation. The article concludes with a discussion of managerial implications and limitations.

Cross-Unit Competition for a Market Charter: The Enduring Influence of Structure

Marketing strategists who operate in turbulent markets face a competitive landscape marked by volatility and evolving market structures. As customer requirements change, an organization that stays in alignment with its markets will form new business units or alter the market charters of existing business units. In a longitudinal study, the authors traced the structural realignments that accompanied a Fortune-500 firms entry into the Internet market. As the charter moved from a freshly created unit to an established business unit, the authors found support for the prediction that the former organizational structure will continue to shape the identity, beliefs, and social ties of managers. The study highlights the structural, social, and cognitive factors that must be managed as corporate decision makers search for the best strategy–structure fit for an emerging market opportunity.

Balancing Risk and Return in a Customer Portfolio

Marketing managers can increase shareholder value by structuring a customer portfolio to reduce the vulnerability and volatility of cash flows. This article demonstrates how financial portfolio theory provides an organizing framework for (1) diagnosing the variability in a customer portfolio, (2) assessing the complementarity/similarity of market segments, (3) exploring market segment weights in an optimized portfolio, and (4) isolating the reward on variability that individual customers or segments provide. Using a seven-year series of customer data from a large business-to-business firm, the authors demonstrate how market segments can be characterized in terms of risk and return. Next, they identify the firms efficient portfolio and test it against (1) its current portfolio and (2) a hypothetical profit maximization portfolio. Then, using forward- and back-testing, the authors show that the efficient portfolio has consistently lower variability than the existing customer mix and the profit maximization portfolio. The authors provide guidelines for incorporating a risk overlay into established customer management frameworks. The approach is especially well suited for business-to-business firms that serve market segments drawn from diverse sectors of the economy.

Self-relevance and purchase goals: Mapping a consumer decision

The purpose of this research is to introduce a cognitive mapping methodology designed to explore the goal structures that are activated by a consumer’s experienced feelings of self-relevance or involvement with a product or service. In particular, the authors examine how a consumer’s enduring involvement with a product class (greeting cards) and specific decision situations affect the content and structure of the activated purchase goals in a consumer’s decision map. As compared to enduring involvement, the decision situation more strongly affected the content of the goals in the decision maps. The authors conclude with a discussion of the implications of the method and the results for consumer behavior and marketing strategy research.

A network perspective of account manager performance

Purpose – The paper seeks to provide a conceptual model of the account management process that isolates the social connections of more versus less effective account managers.Design/methodology/approach – The sales performance research tradition is reviewed and a social network perspective is offered to explore the web of internal working relationships that account managers activate to acquire customer and competitor information and create solutions for customers.Findings – Available evidence suggests that network size, network range, and network diversity are among the relational properties that may influence account manager performance. By building a strong network of relationships both within the firm as well as within the customer organization, high‐performing account managers, compared with their peers, are better able to diagnose customer requirements, mobilize internal experts, and choreograph the activities that are required to out‐maneuver rivals and create the desired customer solution.Practical ...

Modeling individual preference evolution and choice in a dynamic group setting

Organizational buying and strategic marketing decisions often emerge from a messy process of belief accommodation and compromise. In a longitudinal field study, the authors investigate how the beli...

Role identity and attributions of high‐performing salespeople

Purpose – This paper aims to propose and test an exploratory model, illustrating performance differences based on underlying role identities and attributions of salespeople in business markets.Design/methodology/approach – The sample consists of 60 salespeople from a Fortune 100 high technology firm responsible for managing multi‐million dollar customer projects. Interviews with both salespeople and their sales managers provided the data to examine the relationships among role identities, attributions, and performance.Findings – The model suggests that higher‐performing salespeople have role identities as sales consultants, whereas lower performers tend to have role identities as technical specialists. Further, those salespeople with sales consultant role identities were more likely to attribute success to relational factors, whereas salespeople with technical specialist role identities were more likely to attribute success to technical factors. There were no significant relationships among role identitie...

Commentaries and Rejoinder to "Balancing Risk and Return in a Customer Portfolio"

Tarasi et al.’s (2011) article titled “Balancing Risk and Return in a Customer Portfolio” makes a noteworthy contribution to customer portfolio management theory, an important subject that has yet to receive a great deal of research attention. This brief comment emphasizes a few issues regarding the application of modern financial portfolio theory to customer portfolio management. The reason for developing financial portfolio theory was to help financial investors make decisions regarding their securities market portfolios. As Devinney, Stewart, and Shocker (1985) argue in their comments on Cardozo and Smith’s (1983) work, applying financial portfolio theory to a marketing context requires substantive modifications to the theory because this context does not meet some of the critical assumptions in financial portfolio theory. In accordance with that perspective, I highlight some key issues with Tarasi et al.’s approach (2011) that require attention for the work to be truly useful.

Bridging the Theory-Practice Gap in Business Marketing: Lessons from the Field—The JBBM at 21

ABSTRACT Purpose: The purpose of this article is to first examine the distinctive role that Journal of Business-to-Business Marketing (JBBM) assumes in the marketing discipline, explore its heritage and notable accomplishments, and highlight the opportunities and challenges that specialized business journals confront across functional areas. Next, the authors explored the academic-practitioner divide and propose action steps that can be followed to craft corporate research partnerships to address business marketing problems. Methodology/approach: The authors drew on research experience gained across more than a dozen empirical studies that have been used in a collaborative approach with a partner firm from the business-to-business sector to examine a core marketing problem. Findings: High levels of engagement and support from the partner organization appear to be most likely to occur when members of the partnering firm were actively involved in framing the research question. Research implications: A set of action steps is proposed as a vehicle for initiating and managing a corporate research partnership. By providing potential access to rare data, a collaborative approach may provide a path for attacking substantive research issues in business marketing.

Is construct validity a problem of measurement or theoretical generalization? A reply to Malhotra

Abstract In this rejoinder, we respond to the criticisms offered by Naresh Malhotra concerning our article on the construct validity of Intrinsic Sources of Personal Relevance. We present our view of construct validity as a conceptual or theoretical problem involving the creation of scientific meaning (hypothetical constructs) and the generalization of that construct meaning. Then, we discuss 4 methodological issues raised by Malhotra, focusing on their relevance for making inferences about the meaning and generalizability of a hypothetical construct. We conclude by contrasting the measurement and theoretical generalizability views of construct validity, and we discuss the implications of each approach for conducting scientific research.