Brent Smith

The Effectiveness of Upstream Influence Attempts in High and Low Context Export Marketing Channels

Abstract International strategic alliances in marketing channels have become increasingly common in recent years. The parties to the alliance often involve exporters and foreign distributors. In the context of this type of alliance, the channel partners view themselves as equals or colleagues rather than channel captain and follower. Therefore, influence rather than power becomes the relevant construct, especially when communication flows upstream rather than downstream. In this study, we examine such influence attempts as they occur across different cultural contexts to determine whether cultural differences are related to such upstream influence attempts.

Understanding Cultural Frames in the Multicultural Sales Organization: Prospects and Problems for the Sales Manager

Changes in social demographics, legislation, and wealth distribution have prompted modern sales organizations to recognize the importance of cultural diversity within customer markets and sales forces. Some sales forces have employed multicultural salespersons to aide their pursuit of multicultural target markets. Traditionally, organizations have conceptualized cultural identity as membership in one particular category, or frame, determined by race or nationality. However, modern transnational sales organizations actually include sales managers and sales subordinates who may identify with more than one cultural frame, or meaning system. These cultural frames present important prospects and problems for todays sales managers who interface with sales subordinates having compatible or incompatible cultural frames. Within the context of the sales manager and sales subordinate relationship, we present a 2 × 2 framework explaining the cross-cultural interfaces between individuals having one cultural frame (monocultural) versus two or more culture frames (multicultural).

Bracketed morality and ethical ideologies of sport fans

Abstract Historically, scholarship on ethics in sport has focused almost exclusively on practices of athletes, coaches and leagues. In this study, we highlight a serious void in the existing empirical literature on morality – ethical ideology and intention – of sport fans. Applying ‘bracketed morality,’ sport fans sometimes enact or accept behaviours otherwise regarded as problematic in everyday situations – insulting athletes, cursing at officials, celebrating riotously and/or intimidating fans of rival teams. Only some fans actually sanction (oppose) these kinds of behaviours, suggesting that they are questionable but not necessarily problematic, and, thus, worthy of closer investigation. Here, with the aid of four scenarios, we find that sport fans’ ethical ideology influences ethical intention. We also find that this influence is mediated twofold by ethical perception of moral problems and trivialization of observed situations, with trivialization exhibiting greater influence. Hence, while ethical ideologies and perceptions are important, they may be bracketed in evaluations of sport-fan behaviours.

India’s lonely and isolated consumers shopping for an in-store social experience

The purpose of this paper is to investigate how social loneliness, emotional loneliness and social isolation relate to Indian consumers’ enjoyment of social interaction with an in-store salesperson.,Over 300 Indian respondents are surveyed about personal disposition, shopping experiences and other factors. The research model and hypotheses are evaluated utilizing partial least squares structural equation modeling.,As posited, Indian consumers dealing with loneliness and social isolation tend to enjoy in-store shopping experiences involving personal interactions with salespersons. Further, salespersons’ adaptive selling relates positively to consumers’ predisposition to comply with salesperson input and three outcomes (i.e. trust in salesperson, purchase intention and retail patronage).,This study fills a void in current marketing and retailing literature, providing one of the first known empirical investigations of consumers’ experiences with loneliness and social isolation. Overall, the study shows that store-based retailers within culturally collectivistic emerging markets can capitalize on their unique ability to attract and retain shoppers through in-store salesperson interactions.

Personal Ethics of Today’s Sport Fans: Connecting Cultural Values, Ethical Ideologies, and Ethical Intentions

The fanatics of sport are highly engaged participants and observers who can stir excitement, or ire, among others within their midst. In reference to sport fanatics, Mike Schmidt, a former player for Philadelphia Phillies professional baseball team, once declared, “They read their sports pages, know their statistics and either root like hell or boo our butts off. I love it. Give me vocal fans, pro or con, over the tourist types who show up in Houston or Montreal and just sit there.”

The Five Creatures Lesson: How Students Learn to Relate Animals to Industry

Greyser (1997) noted that marketing has “migrated” from being treated as a functional discipline towards being regarded as a concept that informs how organizations should operate. Today’s marketing students must be prepared for creating value in especially dynamic and hypercompetitive times defined by unrelenting innovations, rivalries driven by ideas and agility, co-creation paradigms, consolidation of industries, and much more. Essentially, these marketing students must show that grasp the basic theories of our discipline and demonstrate firm understanding of what competition and strategy really mean for the entire organization. Although marketing is concerned particularly with activities that yield profitable exchanges between companies and customers, these activities are best understood within the context of competition.

Global Perspectives on Contemporary Marketing Education

Global Perspectives on Contemporary Marketing Education addresses this need by considering the development and education of marketing professionals in an age of shifting markets and heightened consumer engagement. A compendium of innovations, insights, and ideas from marketing professors and professionals, this title explores the need for students to be prepared to enter the sophisticated global marketplace.

Choice and Conflict Between Sacred and Secular Music: A Conversation Piece for Teaching Marketing Ethics

The marketing discipline is generally concerned with finding and satisfying consumers with an explicit or latent demand for a product; however, myriad ethical issues exist in relation to marketers and their markets must be addressed (Brenkert, 2008). Recently, business and marketing educators have taken substantially greater interest in helping students understand how moral standards are applied to marketing decisions, practices, and institutions (Weber, 1990). Indeed, with this heightened interest, there are opportunities today to highlight ethical issues that have generally gone unnoticed or unaddressed in the past. Focusing on popular musical entertainment, we aim to create an ethics-oriented conversation piece about the personal struggles (sacred v. secular music) faced by religious churchgoers who comprise a significant proportion of music producers and music consumers. Giving particular emphasis on the Black Christian church, a primary source of the gospel and blues music that has driven rock, r&b, and pop music, we hope to highlight a largely unaddressed ethical phenomenon within a vital subculture of American society.