员工动机对双元销售行为的影响研究:传统性的调节作用

营销人员经常面临现有产品销售和新产品销售之间的悖论,需要采用不同的方式来应对两种销售行为之间的冲突。本研究根据内外动机理论,探究不同动机影响下的销售行为,同时揭示国人的传统性对动机与产品销售两者关系的调节作用。本研究开发了中国情境下的双元销售行为量表,具有良好的信度（0.896）。实证结果表明：（1）内在动机与现有产品和新产品的双元销售行为之间呈现显著的正相关关系,外在动机与现有产品和新产品的双元销售行为呈不显著的正向关系。（2）中国传统性对营销人员的产品销售行为的直接影响作用非常显著,但传统性与内外动机的调节作用表现出多样性。（3）传统性与内在动机的交乘项对双元销售行为起不显著的负向调节作用。（4）传统性与外在动机的交乘项对现有产品销售起不显著的正向影响,对新产品销售起不显著的负向影响。     

How and when a salesperson's perception of organizational politics relates to proactive performance

Politics in the workplace is a reality of organizational life. Several studies have investigated the negative implications of perceived organizational politics on various work attitudes and performance measures but not on proactive performance. However, proactive performance is important in a sales context because salespeople operate in an uncertain environment, and some task aspects cannot be formalized. Moreover, there is still a need for research to analyse the psychological mechanisms that lead perceived organizational politics to cause negative reactions from employees as well as to provide new insights on the boundary conditions of this process. Therefore, we examine the effect of perceived organizational politics on proactive performance through a salesperson's trust in the sales manager, as well as the moderating role of the salesperson's experience.This study uses dyadic data from 192 salespeople and their sales managers from a range of industries. The model entails a moderated mediation process. Results support the proposed model. The findings contribute to the salesforce management literature by suggesting the need to consider the importance of perceived organizational politics and by aiding in the understanding of how and when it hinders proactive performance.     

Partners in new product development: SC Johnson and the alliance for environmental innovation

In the previous issue of CES (Winter 1999), SC Johnson's early efforts at integrating core business decisions with environmental concerns were explored by researchers at INFORM, Inc. By gaining upper management attention, explicitly aligning environmental concerns with key business goals, and designing consistency into the overall company management system, SC Johnson was able to “break down the green wall” in the organization.In this follow-up article, CES explores a recent effort between the Alliance for Environmental Innovation and SC Johnson to further integrate environmental decision making throughout the organization. The project focused on: (1) creating practical tools to identify environmental considerations at the earliest stages of new product development, and, (2) addressing consumers' environmental needs in the conception and marketing of “greener” products. The Alliance and SC Johnson formed a task force that included both staff members from the Alliance, as well as members of the environmental, product development, product safety and marketing staffs at SC Johnson. This unique partnership has aided SC Johnson by more directly linking consumer and company environmental objectives to the new product development process.     

Dupont,conoco and the biodegradable grease project: Using innovation to turn chemical by-products into a new product

Conoco manufactures lubricants and oils from petroleum and markets them to the mining, trasportation, recreation, construction and related industries. In the wake of the 1990 amendments to the Clean Air Act, the company became concerned that certain customers would be obligated to discontinue the use of lubricants that contained chlorinated solvents. Specifically, Conoco realized that numerous state and local environmental quality standards were becoming stricter with respect to open gear lubricants dropping to the ground from the gears on large power shovels and drag lines used in mining and construction. Although these applications were often in avid regions, groundwater contamination was an issue in other regions. Therefore, if the company did not initiate the development of alternatives to current products, it might lose market share to competitor's products. Fortuitously, a new line of feedstocks came to the attention of Conoco in the form of a chemical by-product stream from a business unit of its parent company, DuPont. The two companies ultimately used this chemical by-product stream to develop a new product to solve the problem.In this case study, we describe a DuPont/Conoco effort to develop a more environmentally friendly niche lubrication product that could be used to mitigate certain heavy machinery environmental problems and create a more competitive slate of products to facilitate sales of an entire line of lubricants. Likewise we examine how Conoco employed part of a chemical by-product stream from another part of the company as feedstock for the new product.     

Early Sales of Seasonal Products with Weather‐Conditional Rebates

Some retailers of seasonal products adopt weather‐conditional rebate programs to induce early sales and increase profits. In such promotions, customers who buy the product in an advance preselling period are offered rebates if a pre‐specified weather condition is realized during the later normal selling season. We investigate the potential benefits of these programs for retailers. We show that the weather‐conditional rebate program can increase sales by price discriminating among a customer's post‐purchase states. Taking advantage of the early sales, it can also reduce the inventory holding cost and ordering cost, and hence can increase the retailer's expected profits. In addition, we numerically investigate the sensitivity of the rebate program's effectiveness to the model parameters and illustrate its advantages over an advance‐discount policy.     

Ambidextrous Organizational Culture,Contextual Ambidexterity and New Product Innovation: A Comparative Study of UK and Chinese High‐tech Firms

Contextual ambidexterity is of paramount importance for new product innovation and organizational success, particularly in high‐tech firms operating in a dynamic environment. Whilst it is recognized that contextual ambidexterity is grounded in organizational culture, existing research has not crystallized what kind of organizational culture enables contextual ambidexterity and consequently new product innovation. In this paper, drawing on data from 150 UK and 242 Chinese high‐tech firms, we conceptualize ambidextrous organizational culture as a higher‐order construct consisting of organizational diversity and shared vision, and examine its impacts on contextual ambidexterity and consequently on new product innovation outcomes. Using structural equation modelling, we find significant relationships between ambidextrous organizational culture, contextual ambidexterity and new product innovation outcomes; contextual ambidexterity mediates the relationship between ambidextrous organizational culture and new product innovation outcomes. Our findings also suggest that the above relationships are robust in the UK–China comparative research context, and that contextual ambidexterity and new product innovation outcomes are dependent on business unit level heterogeneity (i.e. ambidextrous organizational culture and research and development strength) rather than industry or cross‐cultural differences.     

Interactive Multiple Objective Decision Support for Sales Force Sizing and Deployment*

An interactive decision aid is introduced for the deployment of two sales resources: salespeople and sales support staff. The aid consists of a normative sales resource allocation model with five objectives and an interactive multiple objective programming solution procedure. The specific decision problem addressed involves the assignment of salespeople and sales support people to customer accounts and the allocation of the time they spend on these accounts. The authors contribute to the existing sales resource modeling literature by dealing with the deployment of two sales resources and interactively solving this problem with respect to five short-run and long-run objectives of the firm. This approach differs from existing sales force modeling efforts in which the solution is found noninteractively by optimizing a single sales resource model with respect to a single objective, often short-run sales. An application of the decision aid to the deployment problem of an industrial sales force manager is presented. Furthermore, useful extensions of the basic sales resource allocation model are discussed.     

How Should a Firm Manage Deteriorating Inventory?

Firms selling goods whose quality level deteriorates over time often face difficult decisions when unsold inventory remains. Since the leftover product is often perceived to be of lower quality than the new product, carrying it over offers the firm a second selling opportunity, a product line extension to new and unsold units, and the ability to price discriminate. By doing so, however, the firm subjects sales of its new product to competition from the leftover product. We present a two period model that captures the effect of this competition on the firm's production and pricing decisions. We characterize the firm's optimal strategy and find conditions under which the firm is better off carrying all, some, or none of its leftover inventory. We also show that, compared to a firm that acts myopically in the first period, a firm that takes into account the effect of first period decisions on second period profits will price its new product higher and stock more of it in the first period. Thus, the benefit of having a second selling opportunity dominates the detrimental effect of cannibalizing sales of the second period new product.     

不同权力结构下供应链概率销售策略比较研究

考虑供应链不同权力结构,探讨产品概率销售问题,分析消费者对产品不完全匹配敏感程度、概率产品组合比例等因素变化对其所产生的影响,并对三种不同权力结构进行比较分析。从研究结果来看,三种不同权力结构下产品批发价格、边际利润有所不同,且消费者对产品不完全匹配敏感程度及概率产品组合比例变化均对其产生影响,但影响程度在不同权力结构下会不同。数值分析进一步表明,弱化消费者对产品不匹配敏感程度或提升消费者购买概率产品的不确定性将有利于供应链实施概率销售策略。     

Demand Growth in Services: A Discrete Choice Analysis of Customer Preferences and Online Selling

The selling of perishable services (e.g., hotel rooms, airline seats, and rental cars) online is increasingly popular with both retailers and consumers. Among the innovative approaches to online sales is opaque selling. First popularized by Priceline.com's name‐your‐own‐price model, opaque selling hides some attributes of the service (notably, brand and specific location) until after the purchase decision, in exchange for a discounted price. This means that a branded “product” is being sold as somewhat of a commodity, but the brand “name” is protected by the opaque model. The attraction of this model for retailers is that they are presumably able to increase their revenue stream, albeit at a lower rate, by selling rooms that otherwise would remain in inventory. In this article, we outline the development and analysis of an online choice survey to understand consumer preferences among three types of online distribution channels: regular full information sales channels, and opaque sales channels with or without consumer bidding. A Multinomial Logit model is employed to analyze the data and measure the consumer trade‐offs between price and other attributes of the product. We use the estimated model to calculate the incremental demand and revenue created by using an opaque channel simultaneously with regular full information channels. On balance, we find that correctly priced opaque channels can add to hotels revenue streams without undue cannibalization of regular room sales.     

Universal equation for the relative change in profit of manufacturing company

In contemporary conditions of the company's business operations, where high dynamics of costs, sales volume and change of production programme is present, it is of crucial importance to investigate their effects on the change of profit. Starting from cost–volume–profit equation, the aim is to arrive at a universal equation that will simultaneously measure a relative change in profit for a number of products, not only under the influence of change in sales volume but also of other relevant variables, such as sales price, fixed and variable costs. The basic hypothesis is that it is possible to establish in a form of universal equation the dependence between the change in profit and change in influential variables. In this investigation, first it was observed the partial influence of some variables on the change in profit and their dependence was determined for a single product, and then for more than one product. Finally, by summing up all those effects, a universal equation of profit change was obtained. The derived universal equation for the relative change in profit along with simultaneous effects of several variables makes possible for the company management to more simply determine the profit for diverse conditions of business operations. The universal equation for the relative change in profit was applied in one company and the results obtained confirm its significance.     

Supply Management Under High Goal Incongruence: An Empirical Examination of Disintermediation in the Aerospace Supply Chain

Aftermarket sales and profits are becoming an increasingly important part of an original equipment manufacturer's (OEM) business model. Because replacement parts often do not require further manufacturing, OEMs act as intermediaries in the aftermarket. As with any intermediary, the OEM must concern itself with suppliers disintermediating its supply chain selling replacement parts directly to the OEM's customers. We frame supply chain disintermediation (SCD) as a principal–agent contracting problem between an OEM buyer and a supplier. Hypotheses relate contract conditions, goal incongruence, supplier capabilities and contract enforcement to SCD. The data are collected from the aerospace industry using a multimethod study, combining an Internet‐based survey with archival data. Causal modeling with structural equation modeling (SEM) shows general support for the hypotheses. Particularly, SCD is positively related to buyer–supplier goal incongruence. The agency model offers insights that differ from previous transaction‐cost‐based models of buyer–supplier relationships. OEM buyers with a lucrative aftermarket should consider aligning goals through incentives rather than relying entirely on economic hostages associated with specific assets.     

Applications and Implementation DETERMINING THE REWARDS SALESPEOPLE VALUE: A COMPARISON OF METHODS*

Although salesmanagers can attempt to motivate salespeople by manipulating their rewards, these manipulations will fail if salespeople do not value the rewards and their levels. Methods for determining valued rewards can therefore be important to those charged with their determination. This study compares three measurement schemes for assessing salespeople's valences for various rewards: functional measurement, conjoint analysis, and thermometer scaling. All three schemes produce similar conclusions as to how rewards are valued and the acceptable tradeoffs among them. Thermometer scaling outperformed the others with respect to the time it took to secure the judgments and the palatability of the task, while conjoint measurement performed least well in these respects.     

Retail Strategies for Extended Warranty Sales and Impact on Manufacturer Base Warranties

Consider two competing manufacturers selling their products through the same retailer. If this retailer derives profits from extended warranty sales, the manufacturers face a dilemma in setting their base warranties. Although they have incentive to increase their warranties to make their products attractive to consumers, the retailer might prefer selling lower‐warranty products to enhance extended warranties sales. We develop a stylized model to determine and analyze optimal manufacturer and retailer strategies in this setting. Consistent with the ongoing decline in warranties for products that are sold through independent retailers, we show that these interactions exert downward pressure on manufacturer warranties. Rather than pitching the extended warranty at the checkout after customers have selected a certain product, we find that retailers can often benefit from inducing simultaneous consideration of product and extended warranty characteristics, for example by posting extended warranty information right on the product shelf.     

Accurate Response with Refurbished Consumer Returns

Centering around anticipative and reactive capabilities of firms, accurate response is an important supply‐side strategy to deal with demand uncertainty. Clearly, the structure of the possible reaction will crucially influence the optimal anticipative decision making. In this article, we extend the existing literature in this area by including a new reactive capability, namely the utilization of refurbished consumer returns from early sales to react to demand later in the selling season. Because consumer returns depend on previous sales, there is also a direct link to the anticipative supply decision. We capture this effect in a newsvendor‐type model and provide both analytical and numerical insights into the optimal anticipative and reactive decisions as well as the value of refurbishing in terms of the retailer's expected profitability.     

Economic and Environmental Assessment of Remanufacturing Strategies for Product + Service Firms

This article provides a data‐driven assessment of economic and environmental aspects of remanufacturing for product + service firms. A critical component of such an assessment is the issue of demand cannibalization. We therefore present an analytical model and a behavioral study which together incorporate demand cannibalization from multiple customer segments across the firm's product line. We then perform a series of numerical simulations with realistic problem parameters obtained from both the literature and discussions with industry executives. Our findings show that remanufacturing frequently aligns firms' economic and environmental goals by increasing profits and decreasing the total environmental impact. We show that in some cases, an introduction of a remanufactured product leads to no changes in the new products' prices (positioning within the product line), implying a positive demand cannibalization and a decrease in the environmental impact; this provides support for a heuristic approach commonly used in practice. Yet in other cases, the firm can increase profits by decreasing the new product's prices and increasing sales—a negative effective cannibalization. With negative cannibalization the firm's total environmental impact often increases due to the growth in new production. However, we illustrate that this growth is nearly always sustainable, as the relative environmental impacts per unit and per dollar rarely increase.     

Threshold Incentives and Sales Variance

In this paper, we analyze the impact of two forms of commonly used threshold‐based incentive schemes on the observed sales variability. The first form of the incentive comprises an additional marginal payment on crossing a specified sales threshold and the second form of the incentive scheme comprises a lumpsum bonus payment on crossing the predetermined sales threshold. We model the effect of such incentives under two specific scenarios: an exclusive dealership selling a single product and a non‐exclusive dealer selling two competing products. For an exclusive dealer, we show that a bonus contract not only increases the expected sales, but, more importantly, decreases the sales (order) variance. Consequently, the bonus‐based scheme allows the manufacturer to regulate sales variance better. With a non‐exclusive dealer, the sales variance increases substantially with an additional marginal payment contract. However, our analysis suggests that the bonus contract continues to perform better in this case, too, if the threshold level is set appropriately using the underlying demand distribution.     

Selling with Money‐Back Guarantees: The Impact on Prices,Quantities, and Retail Profitability

In this paper, we consider a retailer adopting a “money‐back‐guaranteed” (MBG) sales policy, which allows customers to return products that do not meet their expectations to the retailer for a full or partial refund. The retailer either salvages returned products or resells them as open‐box items at a discount. We develop a model in which the retailer decides on the quantity to procure, the price for new products, the refund amount, as well as the price of returned products when they are sold as open‐box. Our model captures important features of MBG sales including demand uncertainty, consumer valuation uncertainty, consumer returns, the sale of returned products as open‐box items, and consumer choice between new and returned products and possibility of exchanges when restocking is considered. We show that selling with MBGs increases retail sales and profit. Furthermore, the second‐sale opportunity created by restocking returned products enables the retailer to generate additional revenues. Our analysis identifies the ideal conditions under which this practice is most beneficial to the retailer. Offering an MBG without restocking increases the new product price. We show that if the retailer decides to resell the returned items as open‐box, the price of the new product further increases, while open‐box items are sold at a discount. On the other hand, customers enjoy more generous refunds along with lower restocking fees. The opportunity to resell returned products also generally decreases the initial stocking levels of the retailer. Our extensive numerical study substantiates the analytical results and sharpens our insights into the drivers of performance of MBG policies and their impact on retail decisions.     

Visualizing the factory through meta- manufacturing processes

Milestone or deadline driven production management is predominant in most manufacturing companies. Problems and other disturbing occurrences tend to see their first daylight during phases where plans are implemented into reality, for example, when production commences, prototypes enter manufacturing and deliveries are expected. Conventional control routines fail to depict the true progress and procedures of the company on an on-line basis, which means that instead of being proactive they serve as means to react to already existing problems. This paper studies the application of advanced visualization techniques to the already existing information embedded in a comany's information infrastructure, and how it can help management to anticipate probable near future pitfalls. By studying those daily operations of a company which share a document relationship with the true manufacturing process, that is, the meta-manufacturing processes, a completely new perspective on the company's value-adding activities is drawn. By mining the existing data reservoirs of a company traditionally difficult management processes, such as product development, vendor integration, production planning, can be analysed and the problems identified in a novel way to react in advance. The paper displays several empirical examples from bulk to one-of-a-kind production where the method has been successfully implemented.     

The Effect of Competition on Recovery Strategies

Manufacturers often face a choice of whether to recover the value in their end‐of‐life products through remanufacturing. In many cases, firms choose not to remanufacture, as they are (rightly) concerned that the remanufactured product will cannibalize sales of the higher‐margin new product. However, such a strategy may backfire for manufacturers operating in industries where their end‐of‐life products (cell phones, tires, computers, automotive parts, etc.) are attractive to third‐party remanufacturers, who may seriously cannibalize sales of the original manufacturer. In this paper, we develop models to support a manufacturer's recovery strategy in the face of a competitive threat on the remanufactured product market. We first analyze the competition between new and remanufactured products produced by a monopolist manufacturer and identify conditions under which the firm would choose not to remanufacture its products. We then characterize the potential profit loss due to external remanufacturing competition and analyze two entry‐deterrent strategies: remanufacturing and preemptive collection. We find that a firm may choose to remanufacture or preemptively collect its used products to deter entry, even when the firm would not have chosen to do so under a pure monopoly environment. Finally, we discuss conditions under which each strategy is more beneficial.