Ruth Stock

The Link Between Salespeople’s Job Satisfaction and Customer Satisfaction in a Business-to-Business Context : A Dyadic Analysis

Although it has frequently been argued that the job satisfaction of a company’s employees is an important driver of customer satisfaction, systematic research exploring this link is scarce. The present study investigates this relationship for salespeople in a business-to-business context. The theoretical justification for a positive impact of salespeople’s job satisfaction on customer satisfaction is based on the concept of emotional contagion. The analysis is based on a dyadic data set that involves judgments provided by salespeople and their customers collected across multiple manufacturing and services industries. Results indicate the presence of a positive relationship between salespeople’s job satisfaction and customer satisfaction. Furthermore, the relationship between salespeople’s job satisfaction and customer satisfaction is found to be particularly strong in the case of high frequency of customer interaction, high intensity of customer integration into the value-creating process, and high product/service innovativeness.

An attitude-behavior model of salespeople’s customer orientation

The goal of this article is to provide deeper insights into the construct of customer orientation at the individual level. The article has three main objectives: First, this study provides a two-dimensional conceptualization of customer orientation that distinguishes between attitudes and behaviors. Second, it explores direct and indirect effects of customer-oriented attitudes on customer satisfaction. Third, the authors propose and examine a positive moderating effect of empathy, reliability, and expertise on the link between customer-oriented attitude and customer-oriented behavior and a negative moderating effect of salespeople’s restriction in job autonomy. The analysis is based on dyadic data that involve judgments provided by salespeople and their customers across multiple manufacturing and services industries in a business-to-business context. Results support the authors’ two-dimensional conceptualization of customer orientation. The authors also find that customer-oriented attitudes have a direct effect on customer satisfaction. The four proposed moderating effects are also in evidence.

Interorganizational Teams as Boundary Spanners between Supplier and Customer Companies

Extant research has largely ignored the phenomenon of interorganizational teams, which consist of members from both supplier and customer companies. This study examines the degree to which team interorganizationality influences team performance in a business-to-business context. On the basis of resource-dependence theory and boundary theory, the author argues that team interorganizationality positively influences team effectiveness, particularly when uncertainty is high. The hypotheses testing is based on multiple informant data collected from members and leaders of 225 teams in various industries. The results show the positive influence of team interorganizationality on team effectiveness. In addition, uncertainty-related moderator variables (company-related, market-related, and technological uncertainty) strengthen the link between team interorganizationality and team effectiveness.

Drivers of Team Performance: What Do We Know and What Have We Still to Learn?

The investigation of drivers of team performance has become the main issue of numerous publications in the last decades. Researchers of different disciplines in business administration (especially organization theory, marketing research, and human resources management) and psychology have been interested in that topic.This article aims at providing deeper insights into the existing research on antecedents of team performance by a systematic literature review. More specifically, this literature review is based on 72 empirical studies which investigate the antecedents of team performance empirically. Based on the literature review, a systematic evaluation of the studies is provided and areas for future research are discussed.

Can Customer Satisfaction Decrease Price Sensitivity in Business-to-Business Markets?

ABSTRACT There is widespread agreement in the literature that customer satisfaction is an important driver of organizational performance. However, existing research has tended to focus on only a few variables which mediate the link between customer satisfaction and organizational performance (especially customer loyalty). The goal of this paper is to provide deeper insights into the outcomes of customer satisfaction by studying the link between customer satisfaction and price sensitivity, drawing upon different theoretical perspectives (i.e., transaction cost theory and equity theory). The study is based on a dyadic data set collected from salespeople and their customers across multiple manufacturing and services industries in a business-to-business context. Results indicate the presence of an inverse relationship between customer satisfaction and price sensitivity. Findings also indicate that the link under consideration is particularly strong in the case of high product/service specificity and product/service complexity.

Who should be in power to encourage product program innovativeness, R&D or marketing?

The degree to which the research and development (R&D) department is regarded as more important for product innovativeness than is marketing, with greater potential to influence innovation decisions, appears ambiguous. This study examines how R&D’s level of power, relative to marketing’s, affects product program newness and meaningfulness, and thus market and financial performance. Relying on the motive of enhancement, this study reveals two underlying mechanisms to explain considerations of R&D and marketing depending on R&D’s power. A multi-informant sample of top executives and subordinates from 229 firms indicates distinct effects of R&D’s relative power on product program newness and meaningfulness. Specifically, R&D power exhibits a positive linear relationship with product program newness but a nonlinear effect with meaningfulness. To expand market and financial performance, firms should seek to generate meaningful product innovations through a moderate level of relative R&D power, particularly when their environments are characterized by high competitive intensity.

Teams an der Schnittstelle zwischen Anbieter- und Kunden-Unternehmen

Bestandsaufnahme der Reamforschung Bezugsrahmen, Vorgehensweise und Datengrundlage Mediatorenanalyse: direkte und indirekte Wirkungsmechanismen im Vergleich Nicht-lineare Analyse: Betrachtung nicht-monotoner Effekte Analyse der Interorganisationalitat von Teams

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.

Interorganisationale Teams: Transaktionskostentheoretische Überlegungen und empirische Befunde zum Teamerfolg

SummaryTeams play an important role at the interface of a company with its customers in many settings. It can be observed in business practice that companies sometimes involve employees from customer companies in such teams.This article studies the phenomenon of interorganizational teams. Interorganizationality of a team is conceptualized in terms of team composition and power distribution within a team. Drawing upon transaction cost theory the authors discuss performance outcomes of team interorganizationality. Hypotheses testing is based on a sample of more than 200 teams across several industries. Results indicate a positive impact of interorganizationality on team performance. Furthermore, this effect is positively moderated by situational characteristics such as market related dynamism, task related dynamism, and task related complexity.

Organizational work–family support as universal remedy? A cross-cultural comparison of China, India and the USA

In both industrialized and emerging countries, organizations increasingly seek to support employees’ efforts to maintain a healthy work–family balance. Research has identified two types of organizational support in this context: formal work–family programs and informal work–family cultures. This study examines the relative effects of work–family programs versus work–family culture on employees’ job satisfaction and performance in various cultural environments. Drawing on the individualism–collectivism cultural dimension introduced by Hofstede, it is argued that employees’ cultural background may affect family models, which in turn determine employees’ need for formal organizational work–family support, but are not related to employees’ need for informal support. In line with this notion, the results from comparisons of an industrialized country (the USA) with two emerging countries (China and India) show that work–family culture has positive effects in all three contexts. However, formal work–family programs positively affect job satisfaction and job performance only in India and the USA, whereas they exhibit no significant effect in the more collectivist setting of China.