Po-Chien Li

Resource commitment behaviour of industrial exhibitors: an exploratory study

Purpose – The purpose of this study is to assist practitioners in improving the benefits they receive from trade shows. This study seeks to investigate the behaviour of resource commitment of exhibiting firms and its relationships with market orientation and exhibition performance.Design/methodology/approach – Data were collected at the 2007 Suzhou Circuitex Show, which is held annually in Suzhou, Jiangsu Province, China. It is one of the largest international shows for the printed circuit board (PCB) industry. A total of 315 questionnaires were handed out and 185 usable questionnaires were returned.Findings – The results advance the theoretical understanding of the market orientation‐resource commitment behaviour – performance framework within the setting of an industrial trade show. This study finds that market orientation is positively associated with an exhibiting firms resource commitment behaviour, which in turn has varying influences on the different dimensions of trade show performance.Research l...

Exploring interaction-based antecedents of marketing-R&D collaboration: evidence from the Taiwan’s semiconductor industry

Marketing-R&D integration has been recognized as a key success factor of the NPD (new product development) programs. Although previous research has differentiated two integrative approaches (i.e., interaction and collaboration), a theoretical gap remains unaddressed: whether there is a relationship between Marketing-R&D interaction and collaboration? Lack of knowledge at this point not only shows a cleft in theory, but also prevents us from offering useful guidance for practitioners to better NPD practices and results. The present research, from an interpersonal interaction perspective, explores and tests interaction-based antecedents of Marketing-R&D collaboration. The results of a survey of 94 semiconductor companies in Taiwan provide fresh evidence for the effects of selected predictors on the collaboration. In addition, the collaboration is shown to have different impacts on the NPD process and NPD output performance at a firm level. Both theoretical and managerial implications of the current research are also advanced in this manuscript.

Effects of Top-Performer Rewards on Fellow Salespeople: A Double-Edged Sword

Rewarding top performers is of strategic importance to the sales organization. Top-performing salespeople not only contribute significantly to the success of their firm but may also motivate the skill development of peer salespeople. However, both academic research and anecdotal evidence suggest that top performer rewards can boomerang by damaging peer salespeoples morale and productivity, although the underlying mechanisms and boundary conditions remain unclear. Using a sample of salespeople and their managers from financial investment firms in Taiwan, the authors uncover both positive and negative effects of top-performer rewards. Specifically, it is found that when behavior control is employed, top-performer rewards are positively associated with perceived top-performer customer-relationship-building competence only when overall organizational justice is high. By contrast, when organizational justice is low and behavior control is employed, top-performer rewards give rise to perceived favoritism. Moreover, in large sales units, top-performer rewards are much less likely associated with perceived favoritism when organizational justice is high. It is through the perceived top-performer customer-relationship-building competence and perceived favoritism that top-performer rewards have a double-edged sword effect on fellow salespeoples selling skills, opportunism, and sales performance. Theoretical and managerial implications are discussed.

How to Effectively Manage the Dark Side and Bright Side of Customer Participation in Salesperson Job-Related Outcomes

Over the past decade, customer participation in the value co-creation process has received a great amount of research attention. Occupying a boundary-spanner position, salespeople play a critical role in developing and maintaining relational exchanges with customers in the value co-creation process. This study relies on the job demands-resources (JD-R) theory to propose a conceptual model articulating the effects of two dimensions of customer participation, those being information provision and coproduction, on the salesperson’s job stress (i.e., role ambiguity and role conflict) and job engagement (i.e., sales planning, adaptive selling and selling effort). More importantly, this study articulates that the linkages between customer participation and salesperson job-related outcomes are contingent on informal and formal controls of an organization. That is, organizations may enhance the beneficial effects of customer participation and mitigate the detrimental effects of customer participation on salesperson job-related outcomes by developing appropriate sales control systems and organizational climates. The knowledge gained through this study provides specific managerial implications in relation to effectively managing the influences of customer participation in sales encounters.

Collaborative Communication, Interaction Orientation, Marketing Capabilities and Core Processes Performance

Co-creation of value is the central idea of service-dominant logic that suggests the importance of interaction orientation. This research advances a conceptual framework of interaction orientation and delineates its role in the value creation process. Specifically, the manuscript explicates the relationships among interaction orientation, collaborative communication, marketing capabilities and the firms core process performance.