Rolph E. Anderson

Customer loyalty in e-commerce: an exploration of its antecedents and consequences

Abstract This paper investigates the antecedents and consequences of customer loyalty in an online business-to-consumer (B2C) context. We identify eight factors (the 8Cs—customization, contact interactivity, care, community, convenience, cultivation, choice, and character) that potentially impact e-loyalty and develop scales to measure these factors. Data collected from 1,211 online customers demonstrate that all these factors, except convenience, impact e-loyalty. The data also reveal that e-loyalty has an impact on two customer-related outcomes: word-of- mouth promotion and willingness to pay more.

Free-Riding in Group Projects: Control Mechanisms and Preliminary Data

The article discusses the causes of free-riding in group activities and reviews the empirical literature, then makes 15 recommendations for reducing free-riding by students in academic marketing group projects. The recommendations are based on a review of empirical work in the fields of free-riding and social loafing. The authors also offer preliminary data on student perceptions regarding the effectiveness of six techniques for reducing free-riding: (1) group cohesiveness (group self-selection), (2) group size, (3) unilateral expulsion of teammates, (4) unilateral withdrawal from the group, (5) instructor discussion of the free-riding problem, and (6) evaluation of teammates.

Customer Relationship Management: Its Dimensions and Effect on Customer Outcomes

Despite the rapidly growing customer relationship management (CRM) literature, the dimensions of CRM and their effects on customer outcomes remain equivocal. In this research, we first identify the requisite activities for effective CRM implementation. We then investigate their effect on customer satisfaction, customer retention, and sales growth. Results indicate that managers need to think beyond the technological components of CRM and focus on four key CRM dimensions to significantly enhance customer loyalty and sales growth. In our analysis and discussion, we examine the expanding role of salespeople in successful CRM implementation and outcomes.

Concepts and strategy guidelines for designing value enhancing sales promotions

Sales promotions are probably the least understood and least analyzed of all the promotional tools, yet they are among the most costly and most frequently used. Today’s top managers are relentlessly searching for new areas in which to cut costs and increase profits, so sales promotion are coming under greater scrutiny than ever. In order to justify and skillfully use expenditures on sales promotions for different objectives and target markets, marketing managers must understand some key concepts and thoroughly examine several critical variables across markets and among sales promotion tools themselves that impact directly on sales, profitability, and value added.

Personal Selling and Sales Management in the New Millennium

Several behavioral, technological, and managerial forces are dramatically and irrevocably changing the way that salespeople and sales managers understand, prepare for, and accomplish their jobs. Field salespeople, operating out of mobile virtual offices, are being empowered and becoming increasingly independent as they shift focus from selling to serving customers. Meanwhile, the sales managers job is evolving more toward that of channel manager—overseeing a hybrid sales force serving customers in diverse electronic and field channels. A flexible, continuous learning and adapting environment is required for personal selling and sales management success in the 21st Century.

Customer Satisfaction and Loyalty in E-Markets: A PLS Path Modeling Approach

This research investigates the factors that drive customer satisfaction and loyalty in e-markets. Employing qualitative interviews and field research, we identify key factors that drive customer satisfaction in e-businesses and use the partial least squares path modeling technique to evaluate their effect. Six factors are found to significantly affect satisfaction in e-businesses: adaptation, commitment, network, assortment, transaction ease, and engagement. Further, we discover that the positive effect of satisfaction on loyalty is moderated by customer trust and inertia. At lower levels of inertia and trust, customer satisfaction has a greater effect on loyalty. Actionable recommendations are provided for e-business managers to enhance customer satisfaction.

Leadership style, motivation and performance in international marketing channels

As firms seek to prosper in a fiercely competitive global economy, cooperative inter‐firm alliances among members of the value chain are increasingly being forged. In the area of marketing channels, strategic alliances among international channel partners have become the norm as well. Thus, identification of inter‐firm influence strategies – such as different leadership styles – used by the channel captain to motivate international channel partners becomes increasingly important. More specifically, in administering a firm’s marketing channels, participative, supportive, and directive leadership styles may be effective in eliciting channel partners to exert higher levels of motivation, which, in turn, may be associated with higher levels of performance. The linkages among leadership styles, motivation, and performance are empirically examined on data drawn from a sample of automobile distributors in the USA, Finland, and Poland. International channel management implications are discussed, limitations of the study are identified, and directions for future research are suggested.

The perceived importance of sales managers’ rewards: a career stage perspective

The primary intent of this research was to determine whether the perceived importance of various rewards is influenced by the career stage of sales managers. This study found that sales managers in different career stages have distinct intrinsic and extrinsic reward preferences that may ultimately affect motivation and productivity. Although several statistically significant differences in intrinsic and extrinsic reward preferences were discerned, some reward perceptions were found to be uniform regardless of sales manager career stage. Sales management implications, limitations, and directions for future research are offered.

The use of 9‐ending prices: contrasting the USA with Poland

American multinationals, when deciding pricing strategies for their culturally diverse foreign markets, usually have to debate whether to change or to keep the pricing strategy that they have been using at home. The recent move towards standardization in global markets has only raised the importance of this issue. This research addresses this issue by comparing the effectiveness of 9‐ending prices or just below prices in the USA and in a Central European country, Poland. A conceptual framework was developed to predict why there might be differences in preference for such 9‐ending prices in Poland and the USA. Results from the first study show that 9‐ending prices, which are popular in the US market, are not well received in the Polish market. The second study provided further insights by determining reasons for differences in perception and preference for such prices in the two countries.

Marketing channel management and the sales manager

Abstract For years, the channel manager remained an organizational position found mainly in textbooks and the literature and seldom on company organization charts. Recently, however, persuasive evidence has revealed that marketing channel management comes chiefly under the purview of the sales manager. Accepting this new reality, sales management training will need to be dramatically expanded to include these new channel management responsibilities. But, are all levels of sales managers involved or equally involved in channel management? If not, channel manager training must be tailored for specific levels of sales management in order to achieve desired channel effectiveness and efficiency. To date, no published research has explored whether channel management involvement varies at different levels in the sales manager hierarchy. In this age of channel dynamism, successful companies must determine the specific involvement of each sales management level in channel management so that appropriate training and support can be provided to optimize performance in this critical area of market competition. To address the foregoing issues, data were drawn from a random national sample of sales managers. Results indicate that sales managers at all hierarchical levels participate in administering various aspects of marketing channel management. The degree of involvement, however, varies significantly by sales manager level. Sales management implications are discussed, and areas for future research are suggested.