Edward F. Fern

Comparative versus noncomparative advertising: A meta-analysis.

Previous research and reviews on comparative advertising report mixed results. The authors report the results from a meta-analysis that examines the efficacy of comparative advertising. The analysi...

A temporal dynamic model of spousal family purchase-decision behavior

The authors examine family purchase-decision dynamics to shed light on enhancing marketing communication effectiveness. In particular, the authors are interested in understanding the temporal nature of spousal behavioral interaction in family decision making to help marketers target communication messages, shape brand choice, and guide personal selling activities. The authors calibrate a dynamic simultaneous equations model to investigate spousal family purchase-decision behavior: What are spousal behavioral interactions in a discrete purchase decision, and what are the temporal aspects of spousal decision behavior across decisions? The results indicate that spouses tend both not to reciprocate coercion in a discrete decision and to adjust influence strategies over time. The authors also investigate the effectiveness of influence strategies and spousal satisfaction with decisions and their impacts on spousal subsequent decision behaviors from a postdecision perspective as a mechanism to explain why spouses revise decision behaviors across purchase decisions. The authors discuss marketing implications of their findings and present ideas about how to use these findings creatively to target advertising and sales messages to influential spouses in specific decision contexts.

Salesforce turnover: Those who left and those who stayed

Abstract Research was undertaken to determine what factors explained the differences between salespeople who left a large computer manufacturer and those who stayed. The analysis suggested that the two groups differed in meaningful ways.

Risk‐taking propensity in supplier choice: Differences by sex and decision frame in a simulated organizational buying context

Past research concerning decision framing has found that buyers choices tend to be risk averse for decisions framed as a gain and risk seeking for choices framed as a loss. Attribution theory suggests that women may be less likely to take risk than men when faced with similar decision-making problems. The present study sought to determine whether there would be differences between men and women with respect to their supplier choices based on how the purchasing decision was framed. Two experiments were conducted: one using a price-based purchasing scenario and the other using a price-based and a quality-based purchasing scenario. For the price-based scenario women tended to make more risky supplier choices than men when the purchasing decision was framed as a loss, and less risky supplier choices than men when the purchasing decision was framed as a gain. No differences between the sexes were found for the quality-based scenario.

Unravelling Criteria for Assessing the Performance of Salespeople: A Causal Analysis

AbstractIn the past, academic research on sales force performance has used either objective performance data or subjective managerial ratings to measure sales performance. Consistent with corporate practices, objective and subjective performance measures were used in this research project. The relationships among three components of performance: specific task behaviors, specific goal achievement and overall performance were examined. A casual analysis suggests that managerial evaluations of overall sales performance are influenced by their perceptions of specific selling behaviors and the degree to which sales people attain specified performance goals.

Conflict in marketing channels: the impact of dual distribution

This paper reports the findings of a quasi-experiment using simulation gaming in a classroom setting aimed at determining the impact of dual distribution upon marketing channel conflict. While the results uncovered no differences in conflict perceptions between two experimental groups – a single channel control group and a dual channel treatment group – they did indicate that channel structure moderated the longitudinal nature of conflict in marketing channels.