Nicolas Zacharias

Salespersons’ Empathy as a Missing Link in the Customer Orientation—Loyalty Chain: An Investigation of Drivers and Age Differences as a Contingency

Salespersons’ customer orientation has attracted considerable attention from practitioners and researchers. By distinguishing customer-oriented attitude from behavior, this study sheds light on customers’ perceptions of salespersons’ empathy, as a missing link between customer orientation and customer-related outcomes. Noting the increasing age diversity among salespersons and customers, this study also investigates whether age differences in salesperson–customer dyads moderate the relationships of salespersons’ customer-oriented attitude and behavior with customer outcomes. Finally, this study examines salespersons’ climate perceptions as antecedents of their customer-oriented attitudes. Results of multilevel modeling with data from 164 salespersons and 405 customers reveal that salesperson empathy, as perceived by customers, is an important facilitator of the customer orientation–satisfaction relationship. When there are large age differences, salespersons’ customer-oriented attitude becomes more important for making customers feel understood by salespersons. Regarding antecedents, salespersons’ customer-oriented attitude is influenced by their perceptions of team-member exchange and age-inclusive climate.

The Effect of Service Modularity on Flexibility in the Digital Age – An Investigation in the B2B Context

The goal of this study is to investigate the moderating role of digitalization on the well-known positive effect of service modularity on service flexibility. This is important since research findings on the role of service digitalization in this context are scarce and still equivocal. Following research on digital business strategy, we propose and provide empirical evidence that service digitalization positively moderates the effect of service modularization on service flexibility. By doing this, we furthermore enhance this research by considering service digitalization as a continuum ranging from low (i.e., services mainly provided by personnel) to high (i.e., services mainly provided by IT). In addition, we show that service flexibility has a positive effect on service value which is an important factor for firms’ market success. Hereby we aim to contribute to research on service modularization and technology management. Our research is based on survey-data of 147 companies offering IT services in the B2B context and is analyzed using the partial least square method.

The Good and Bad of Product Program Innovativeness: Evidence from Buyer and Seller Companies

Innovations appear to play a key role in the endeavor to keep business-to-business (B2B) customers attracted, as they offer several advantages to B2B customers and help customers improving their own products. Despite the critical role of new products in creating strong B2B ties, half of all new products introduced never succeed but fail in the marketplace (Lynn et al. 1999; Morris et al. 2003). A possible reason for such failures may be errors in companies’ valuation of customer responses to innovations, on which the success of innovations ultimately hinges (Hauser et al. 2006). Companies might focus only on positive customer responses toward innovativeness, but ignore potential negative customer responses to new products, such as customers turning away from a particular supplier (Athanassopoulos et al. 2001). As a consequence, companies need to understand both positive and negative customer responses to innovativeness.

Strategic Givens In New Product Development: Understanding Curvilinear Effects On New Product Performance

Although top managers’ direct influence on new product development (NPD) projects may not be evident, managers frame the conditions surrounding such projects by determining the strategic directions and managing the context for a firm’s innovation activities. Drawing on strategic leadership theory and effectuation logic, this study proposes nonlinear effects of three important strategic givens determined by top managers that represent key levers to frame firms’ NPD: customer orientation, encouragement to take risks, and autonomy. Multi-informant data from top-level marketing managers and project managers in multiple U.S. high-tech industries indicate optimal levels for each strategic given. A moderate level of customer orientation is optimal for new product performance (inverted U-shaped relationship); new products also perform best when managers support very low or high levels of autonomy (U-shaped relationship). In contrast with a predicted curvilinear effect, managers’ encouragement of risk taking actually exerts a positive linear effect on new product performance.

Does it Really Hurt to Overestimate your Innovativeness? An Analysis of Perception Differences Between Companies and Customers

“New products are the lifeblood of companies” (Lynn et al. 1999, p. 320), and the key to successful innovations is paved by customers accepting them (Hauser et al. 2006). Thus, it is surprising that systematic assessments of how customers perceive the innovativeness of a company’ offering are generally missing. Instead, managerial practice tends to focus on the internal view of innovativeness (Selden and MacMillan 2006). As a consequence, an important question relates to whether companies are actually capable to assess their innovativeness in accordance with the customer perspective.

Co-Development with Customers: Investigation of Strategic Drivers and Product Innovation Outcomes

Co-development with customers has attracted considerable interest as key to companies’ superior product innovativeness and performance. Our study takes a strategic perspective on how companies can support co-development with customers. Relying on signaling theory and boundary theory, we argue that companies can provide specific, long-term signals, which provide organizational members direction for the co-development with customers. Boundary theory further indicates that innovation-oriented strategy as well as transactional and transformational leadership are important signals to reduce organizational members’ uncertainty during co-development. Using data of 137 managers and 421 subordinates, we can support this notion. However, these relationships are contingent on whether physical products or services are developed. In addition, this study provides a more fine-grained perspective on the outcomes of co-development, relying on organizational learning theory. Whereas most research is restricted to linear re...