目标取向和过时感知能力对两类销售行为的影响

销售努力和适应性销售是两类最基本的销售行为,探寻这两种销售行为的决定因素是销售管理领域的热点研究问题.基于教育心理学和销售力管理的相关研究成果,探讨3种目标取向与两类消费行为的关系,并通过引入过时这一概念,探究不同目标取向导致不同程度的销售努力和适应性销售的内在机理.通过对9家公司160名销售人员的问卷调查,运用结构方程模型,考察销售人员的不同目标取向与销售行为和销售力过时感知能力以及销售力过时感知能力与销售行为的关系,并重点检验销售力过时感知能力对目标取向与销售行为关系的中介效应.实证研究结果表明,目标取向对销售力过时感知能力和销售行为均有显著影响,销售力过时感知能力也会显著影响销售行为,销售力过时感知能力在目标取向与销售行为的关系中起到一定的中介作用.     

不同交叉销售结构情境下竞争供应链运营决策研究

不同的销售主体可以销售不同的产品数量。考虑竞争供应链系统由两个制造商和两个零售商组成,下游每个零售商都可以选择垂直上游制造商或者对方的制造商进行产品订购,构建了排他性、单交叉和双交叉三种销售模型,研究不同的竞争强度如何影响零售商订货策略、制造商批发价格和系统绩效。结果表明,当纵向竞争强度不变时,排他性销售下供应链的系统利润随着横向竞争强度的增大而逐渐减小,单交叉销售下供应链的系统利润随着横向竞争强度的增大而逐渐增大。而双交叉销售下供应链的系统利润的变化不仅与横向竞争有关,而且也与纵向竞争相关。     

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.     

Self-Efficacy Beliefs and Sales Performance

Self-efficacy theory predicts that people will perform better when they believe they have the skills necessary for success. It also suggests, however, that believing in long-term rewards for success ("response-outcome expectations") does not correlate with adequate performance. This paper supports the generality of self-efficacy theory and provides evidence that self-efficacy beliefs predict insurance sales performance, whereas response-outcome expectations did not. A questionnaire was developed to measure self-efficacy beliefs and response-outcome expectations using 200 insurance sales representatives. Regression analyses were computed on a different sample of 97 insurance sales representatives using four separate dependent variables (calls-per-week; number of policies sold; sales revenue and a composite performance index on which actual sales commission was based). (1) These analyses established a correlation (but no causal relationship) between self-efficacy beliefs and sales performance. (2) The generality of self-efficacy theory in a business setting is suggested by the relationship between self-efficacy and objective measures of sales performance. (3) The relevance of these results, and the importance of integrating them into the practice of organizational behavior modification is discussed.     

Behavior Management of Client Contacts in a Real Estate Brokerage

A Project intended to increase client-contacting behavior on the part of 16 real-estate sales persons was described. Both contacts with prospective (initials) and with established clients (followups) were targeted for change. During a 20-week baseline, agent self-reports were used as a basis for posting weekly charts of contact behavior together with measured sales and listing performances. A conjunctive token-reinforcement procedure involving both contact behaviors was introduced during a 15 week intervention phase. For all agents as a group, a sustained increase in both behaviors was noted during this phase. Additional analyses revealed, however, that for low baseline performers, the intervention effect was only short-lived. During a subsequent three-week prewithdrawal stage, the increased behavion from the previous phase reverted nearly to baseline levels, despite the continued intervention, in response to instructions that program withdrawal was imminent. Contact behaviors further declined to below baseline levels during the following 4-week withdrawal stage when both posting and token procedures were actually discontinued. A tenninal 6 week reversal phase was marked by a nearly full recovery for all agents of asymptotic intervention levels of contact behavior under a reversed conjunctive token reinforcement schedule. Evidence indicating a correlation between changes in contact behaviors and changes in sales was presented. Also, other company benefits presumably derived from the program were described. Finally, the outcomes of this study were discussed in terms of several important validity concerns.     

Sales performance measurement in bank branches

Studies of bank branch performance have, to date, concentrated on obtaining a single perspective of efficiency. As the financial services industry has intensified, banks have increasingly engated in a proactive, differentiated and customer-based strategy in retail banking in which the sales component of the bank branch activity is emphasized. With the emerging sales culture within banks, as discussed earlier, there is a need to evaluate both sales and service performance. Cook et al. [12] have proposed a model to evaluate simultaneously the sales, service, and aggregate efficiencies of a bank branch. This model accounted for the fact that inputs, in particular resources, are often shared among these functions. In this paper, we extend the data envelopment analysis additive model using goal programming concepts. We thereby derive optimal efficiency scores while taking into account non-volume related activities, that is those involving resources that cannot be assigned to a specific input or output. Again, the proposed model derives an optimal split of the shared resources that maximizes the aggregate efficiency.     

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。     

基于公平关切线上与线下销售渠道演化博弈研究

公平关切影响决策行为,为分析公平关切对线上与线下销售渠道决策行为和竞争策略影响,构建线上与线下销售渠道博弈模型。基于博弈模型,对比分析四种公平关切情况对线上与线下决策变量和利润影响。进一步,为获得线上与线下稳定博弈结果,基于四种公平关切构建演化博弈模型,分析不同公平关切行为对销售渠道参与者决策行为影响。研究主要得到：一方采取公平关切时,会减少另一方收益;一方采取合作公平关切策略与另一方采取公平关切密切相关,也即当一方采取公平关切概率大于某一阀值时,另一方采取不公平关切;线上与线下经过长期演化博弈,演化稳定点为双方都采取公平关切。     

Sales Forecasting with Financial Indicators and Experts' Input

We present a method for forecasting sales using financial market information and test this method on annual data for US public retailers. Our method is motivated by the permanent income hypothesis in economics, which states that the amount of consumer spending and the mix of spending between discretionary and necessity items depend on the returns achieved on equity portfolios held by consumers. Taking as input forecasts from other sources, such as equity analysts or time‐series models, we construct a market‐based forecast by augmenting the input forecast with one additional variable, lagged return on an aggregate financial market index. For this, we develop and estimate a martingale model of joint evolution of sales forecasts and the market index. We show that the market‐based forecast achieves an average 15% reduction in mean absolute percentage error compared with forecasts given by equity analysts at the same time instant on out‐of‐sample data. We extensively analyze the performance improvement using alternative model specifications and statistics. We also show that equity analysts do not incorporate lagged financial market returns in their forecasts. Our model yields correlation coefficients between retail sales and market returns for all firms in the data set. Besides forecasting, these results can be applied in risk management and hedging.     

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.     

VMI模式下考虑促销努力的销量回扣契约模型研究

本文在促销努力影响市场需求,单周期季节性产品销售环境下,分析了集中式供应链和供应商管理库存(VMI)供应链中的供应商供货量和零售商促销努力水平的决策问题。在无契约VMI供应链中引入滞销产品补贴的销量回扣契约,讨论了零售商参与合作的条件,结论表明该契约能够提高VMI供应链的绩效并改善其收益;而VMI供应链中的成员采用改进的销量回扣契约进行协调时,有可能实现集中式供应链的最优收益。最后,通过算例验证了引入滞销产品补贴的销量回扣契约能增加供应商供货量和零售商促销努力水平,大幅度地提升VMI供应链的总收益。     

Relationships between Sales Management Control, Territory Design, Salesforce Performance and Sales Organization Effectiveness

This research evaluates determinants of sales organization effectiveness in a sample of British companies, and contributes to an important new research stream by following recent empirical studies in the USA and Australia. We discuss a model of sales organization effectiveness determined by salesforce outcome performance and behavioural performance, as well as by the use of a behaviour-based control approach. Sales territory design is also considered as a particularly important managerial variable, which has received little analytical attention in the traditional literature, but which appears to be an important influence on the effectiveness of the sales operation. Our exploratory path analytical model suggests that sales territory design has a large effect on sales organization effectiveness both directly, and indirectly through its relationship with salesforce behavioural performance. These findings are somewhat different to those in similar studies in other countries, and suggest some important implications for managers as well as for researchers in this field.     

不同渠道权力结构和信息结构下供应链定价和销售努力决策

本文针对零售商销售努力和销售价格影响需求情况下的制造商-零售商两级供应链,研究不同渠道权力结构和信息结构下供应链的分散决策。基于博弈理论和建模方法,对几种权力结构和信息结构情景建立相应模型,通过理论与数值分析对不同博弈均衡进行比较。研究表明,随着零售商势力逐步增强制造商利润会逐步恶化;但零售商势力增强能否带来更多利润,取决于需求对价格和销售努力的敏感度、销售努力成本以及信息结构。占优一方可以通过获取对方更多信息来改善自己处境。若占优零售商不得不依赖于对制造商成本先验分布进行决策,当估计的均值大于真实成本时,适度的方差对零售商更有利。最后,讨论了销售努力成本分担的合作机制,针对非合作博弈给出了帕累托改进的合约区间和 Nash讨价还价均衡。     

Behavior Analytic Concepts and Change in a Large Metropolitan Research University: The Graduation Success Initiative

The Graduation Success Initiative is a complex, organization-wide application of behavior analytic concepts to improving undergraduate student retention and on-time graduation at a large metropolitan research university. The behavior analytic concepts discussed here include culture, supraorganismic phenomena, selecting environments, macrobehaviors, macrocontingencies, interlocking behavioral contingencies, metacontingencies, and rule-governed behavior. We introduce a change template that includes all pertinent agents in the university system and that focuses change efforts specifically on desired behaviors, targeted behaviors, strategic interventions, and reinforcing contingencies for each of the categories of agents. The Graduation Success Initiative produced a 16-point increase in on-time graduation in 4 years.     

Estimating the Impact of Understaffing on Sales and Profitability in Retail Stores

In this study, we use hourly data on store traffic, sales, and labor from 41 stores of a large retail chain to identify the extent of understaffing in retail stores and quantify its impact on sales and profitability. Using an empirical model motivated from queueing theory, we calculate the benchmark staffing level for each store, and establish the presence of systematic understaffing during peak hours. We find that all 41 stores in our sample are systematically understaffed during a 3‐hour peak period. Eliminating understaffing in these stores can result in a significant increase in sales and profitability in these stores. Also, we examine the extent to which forecasting errors and scheduling constraints drive understaffing in retail stores and quantify their relative impacts on store profits for the retailer in our study.     

A Prompting Procedure for Increasing Sales in a Small Pet Store

Abstract

A simple prompting procedure involving index cards was used to increase suggestive selling by the owner/operator of a small pet grooming business. Over a year of baseline data revealed that no sales prompts were given and few pet products were sold. When the owner was prompted by an index card to ask customers if they wanted to purchase pet products, sales tripled and increased four-fold by the end of the year. This study is part of an increasing interest in the behavioral analysis of consumer choice and addresses both management and marketing concerns by demonstrating how a simple, well-replicated prompting procedure can modify a key employee behavior that in turn changes customer behavior, and results in an important organizational outcome.     

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.     

Coaching as a Packaged Intervention for Telemarketing Personnel

Prior literature indicates that although the sales function of an organization is a critical element for its success, there is a lack of research on specific actions managers can take to influence sales subordinates. The purpose of the present study was to assess the effects of a coaching package combined with incentives on sales performance for telemarketing personnel in an organizational setting. Following the implementation of the coaching package, there was a substantial increase in critical behaviors performed, pending sales set, and final sales completed by all telemarketers.     

基于“拆分-填充-分解-集成”的我国线上零售额预测研究

线上零售额的准确预测是政府制定零售政策和发展规划的依据,也是电商和物流企业确定发展战略的基础。由于我国线上零售额数据具有样本量小、波动性大、受节日影响大、存在缺失值等特征,准确预测变得十分困难。为解决这个问题,本文提出了一种“拆分-填充-分解-集成”的预测框架。具体而言,首先将数据集拆分为实物零售数据与非实物零售数据两部分。其次,分别根据实物零售与非实物零售数据不同的缺失特征对样条插值法做了改进,提出了基于“样条插值-二分调整”的分解填充法以及基于“分段线性函数拟合-样条插值”的分解填充法,对两组数据进行缺失值填充。继而基于两组数据的不同特征,分别提出“乘法分解-ARIMA-移动平均”以及“STL分解-BP神经网络-灰色波形”的预测方法对两组数据进行预测。最后将两组预测结果集成,得到我国线上零售额的预测值。实证结果表明,本文提出的预测框架能较好地捕捉我国线上零售额数据的特征,具有很高的预测精度,且较传统的缺失值填充和预测方法在性能上表现更好。本文提出的“拆分-填充-分解-集成”预测框架,丰富了现有的缺失值填充与预测方法,并为预测实践提供了解决方案。