Douglas B. Grisaffe

Employee commitment to the organization and customer reactions: Mapping the linkages.

Abstract Although it has been claimed that the attitudes that employees have toward their work influence how customers react to the organization, its service and products, relatively little empirical research has examined these possible linkages. The focus in this article is on the relations between organizational commitment and customer reactions (e.g., customer satisfaction, repeat purchase behavior). Specifically, we review relevant theory and research, discuss methodological issues associated with examining this issue, and make recommendations for both researchers and human resource (HR) practitioners interested in mapping linkages between organizational commitment and customer reactions.

Examining the Impact of Servant Leadership on Salesperson’s Turnover Intention

Sales force retention is frequently deemed a critical organizational objective. Responses from 501 full-time salespeople from a variety of industries were used to test a model that examines the impact of servant leadership on salesperson’s turnover intention. This study shows that servant leadership affects turnover intention through a complex moderated and mediated chain-of-effects that involves ethical level, person–organization fit, and organization commitment. This study also shows that servant leadership gains importance when the organization is perceived by the salesperson as unethical. Managerial implications and directions for future research are also provided.

Examining the Impact of Servant Leadership on Sales Force Performance

Much has been written about the importance of focusing on customers to drive organizational success. In this paper, aspects of manager–salesperson relationships are examined as drivers of deeper customer focus in salesperson–customer interactions. In particular, managers’ servant leadership, a leadership style emphasizing genuine concern for subordinate welfare, is examined as a catalyst of parallel concern by salespeople for their customers. Salesperson perceptions of managers’ servant leadership empirically relate to salesperson customer orientation, in turn driving adaptive selling behaviors, customer-directed extra-role behaviors, and sales performance outcomes. Other results and implications for management and sales leadership research are presented.

Effects of Extrinsic Attributes on Perceived Quality, Customer Value, and Behavioral Intentions in B2B Settings: A Comparison Across Goods and Service Industries

ABSTRACT The traditional formulation of customer value is a trade off of benefits and sacrifices, with intrinsic quality typically being the primary benefit, and price typically being the primary sacrifice. While additional sacrifices have been proposed in the literature (e.g., time and effort), we explore three additional benefits, the extrinsic attributes of industry leadership, innovation, and customer focus and their effects on a hierarchical quality-value-intention system. Data gathered from two distinct business-to-business domains, one goods and one services, showed that extrinsic attributes impacted elements of the quality-value-intention system. It was also found that quality and customer focus (an extrinsic attribute) differed in their effects across goods and services contexts. Managerial implications are discussed for creating customer perceived value in goods and services industries.

Does Customer Orientation Impact Objective Sales Performance? Insights from a Longitudinal Model in Direct Selling

Since the inception of the concept, researchers have hypothesized that customer orientation plays a fundamental role in explaining sales performance. However, Franke and Park’s (2006) meta-analysis challenged this notion with findings of a nonsignificant effect of customer orientation on objective sales performance. This counterintuitive result was explained by noting that the impact of customer orientation on objective sales measures may be present in the long run. In this research note, we evaluate that notion by testing a model in which customer orientation is used to predict individual rates-of-change in sales performance over time. Longitudinal salesperson performance in dollars, from the database of a direct selling organization, is merged with survey responses and modeled using an emerging method called latent growth modeling (LGM). Results confirm Franke and Park’s findings that customer orientation has a nonsignificant direct effect on the static initial-level aspect of objective sales performance. However, as postulated, customer orientation does show a significant direct effect on longitudinal sales performance trajectories. Our findings also suggest that customer-oriented selling’s nonsignificant direct effect on cross-sectional performance may be due to a fully mediated indirect effect through adaptive selling.

Service Performance—Loyalty Intentions Link in a Business-to-Business Context: The Role of Relational Exchange Outcomes and Customer Characteristics

This study evaluates the relationship between service performance and customer loyalty intentions in a business-to-business context. Specifically, the third-party logistics industry is used as a contextual setting for the research. A conceptual model is developed based on literature in social exchange theory and business buying behavior. The model suggests that service performance directly influences both social (i.e., trust) and economic (i.e., value) relationship outcomes and that these outcomes positively influence customer loyalty intentions. However, in contrast to existing business-to-consumer research, mediation analysis supports the hypothesis that the relationship between service performance and customer loyalty intention is fully mediated by relationship outcomes. Further analyses indicate that characteristics specific to business customers— organizational relationship norms and industry competitive intensity—have important moderating influences. Collectively, the findings imply that business-to-business service managers should move beyond simply tracking the performance of their services. Customer perceptions of relationship trust and perceived facilitation of economic outcomes also should be measured, since these are more proximal to loyalty outcomes. Further, service managers should leverage customer knowledge to optimize service delivery. Different service strategies should be implemented based on customers’ relational orientation and industry competitive dynamics. The article concludes with logical directions for future research.

Toward Higher Levels of Ethics: Preliminary Evidence of Positive Outcomes

Based on previous research, this study proposes conceptualization and measurement of five distinct ethical levels. The ideas are tested with secondary data obtained from responses of 246 salespeople to a nationwide survey conducted by a leading research firm. Results support a hierarchically indexed measure of ethical level and offer evidence that ethical level relates to a number of important organizational outcomes relevant to long-term viability and success. Specifically, ethical level is positively associated with salesperson well-being, customer and societally related measures, and also with a set of proxies for market and financial performance. This paper brings an important contribution to the sales and ethics literature by demonstrating that a true commitment to ethics is beneficial to salespersons and the firm, and that higher ethical commitment above and beyond codes and enforcement is even more beneficial. A discussion of implications and directions for further research is provided.

Combinatorial Optimization Approaches to Constrained Market Segmentation: An Application to Industrial Market Segmentation

Proper market segmentation schemes should address not only how to develop feasible schemes of homogeneous market segments within designated managerial, institutional, and environmental restrictions, but also how to construct such schemes simultaneously in conjunction with associated resource constraints. Current existing methodological approaches to market segmentation fall short of such development issues. This manuscript proposes an alternative approach for the construction of market segments particular to the needs and constraints for a particular application (NORMCLUS). We employ some recent developments in combinatorial optimization algorithms and heuristics in forming managerially relevant market segments. We illustrate a few aspects of this general methodology in the context of an actual industrial marketing application concerning the differential drivers of customer perceived overall quality for an electric utility company.

Serving first for the benefit of others: preliminary evidence for a hierarchical conceptualization of servant leadership

In this paper, we examine servant leadership as a promising leadership style for todays dynamic sales environments. Conceptual and empirical literature points to servant leaderships strong potential in facilitating benefits to salespeople and the organization. Yet that same literature evidences a problematic lack of consensus regarding components that distinctly reflect servant leadership. Existing conceptualizations include dimensions like humility and providing direction, which clearly overlap with various other leadership styles. In this paper, we first consider unique distinctives of servant leadership. We then propose an extension of the augmentation hypothesis from the transactional and transformational leadership literature. Specifically, we posit that servant leadership distinctives are hierarchically built on transformational characteristics, which themselves are built on transactional characteristics. Using secondary data from a sample of professional salespeople, we apply Guttman scaling and show this hierarchical conceptualization to be empirically tenable. We demonstrate that sales leadership at higher levels on the hierarchy produces incremental gains in salesperson satisfaction, salesperson performance, organizational citizenship behaviors, and corporate social responsibility. We confirm our findings in a validation sample and demonstrate an additional relationship with customer-directed extra-role behaviors. Our results imply that sales organizations can reap enhanced multi-faceted benefits through higher levels of servant leadership.

Increasing the Institutional Commitment of College Students Enhanced Measurement and Test of a Nomological Model

Measurement shortcomings have hampered the understanding of institutional commitment (IC) in college students. Therefore, this study sought to (a) develop validated indices of IC and associated psychosocial attributes and (b) use these indices to test a nomological network of variables and their direct and indirect relationships to IC. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses performed upon the responses of 2,982 undergraduates at eight schools produced psychometrically desirable constructs that were then used to examine a structural equations model of IC. Results confirmed the direct effects of academic integration, social integration, and degree commitment. Also, three constructs had indirect effects: advising effectiveness, academic efficacy, and collegiate stress. These findings offer schools the opportunity to collect reliable and valid scores on key variables in the nomological network surrounding IC and provide a tool for designing efficient interventions.