Marketing Commons^™

Generative Ai’S (Genai) Impact On Sales Performance: An Empirical Study On Business-To-Business Sales Process, Michael Rodriguez, Michael Rodriguez, Mike Krush, Dawn Deeter-Schmelz

Atlantic Marketing Association Proceedings

No abstract provided.

Trust Migration In The Digital Era: Information Regimes And The Transformation Of Buyer–Seller Relationships, Stephen C. Carlson

Atlantic Marketing Journal

Business-to-business selling is being reshaped by rapid advances in digital platforms, enterprise systems, analytics, and artificial intelligence. Organizational buyers increasingly rely on algorithmic tools, peer communities, institutional certifications, and automated evaluation systems before engaging directly with sales representatives. Yet much of the buyer–seller trust literature continues to emphasize interpersonal communication quality, listening behaviors, and individual credibility as primary drivers of relational success.

This article argues that the central transformation in contemporary selling is not the erosion of trust, but its relocation. As technological infrastructures evolve, trust progressively migrates from individual sales representatives to organizational systems, platforms, governance mechanisms, and algorithmic …

Generative Artificial Intelligence In Professional Selling Course: The Art (And Science) Of Prompt Engineering, Michael Rodriguez, Kevin Trainor, Michael Rodriguez

Atlantic Marketing Association Proceedings

No abstract provided.

Gentrification, Poverty, And Investors’ Influence On Vulnerable Populations: A Market Perspective Case Study, Doreen E. Sams, Mary K. Rickard, Aruna Sadasivan

Atlantic Marketing Association Proceedings

No abstract provided.

Selling Trust: The Evolution Of Relationship Selling In The Investment Industry, Kaden N. Kroslak, Frederik Beuk

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

This honors research project examines how relationship selling in the investment industry, especially within registered investment advisory firms, has evolved over time. Advisor-client relationships are being shaped by technology, analytics, regulations, and a frenzy of information. This literature review explores whether the stated factors of technology, credibility, regulations, information access, and fiduciary duty, caused change in how investment advisors create, maintain, and grow client relationships within the context of trust. The project styling, in form of a literature review analyzes peer-reviewed studies on financial technology, artificial intelligence, psychological approaches, and regulatory systems. The outcome is a paper which helps fill …

The Impact Of Irrational Beliefs On Dysfunctional Decision-Making In B2b Salespeople, Barron W. Brown

Doctoral Dissertations

The complexity of the contemporary business-to-business (B2B) sales landscape requires salespeople to respond faster, be more knowledgeable, and add more value to buyer interactions than ever before. As such, B2B salespeople must carefully consider the impact of their decisions since they have the potential to directly impact organizational revenue and bottom-line outcomes. The present research utilizes rational-emotive behavior theory to examine judgment and decision-making in B2B salespeople. Research questions are presented and tested with a sample of 306 B2B salespeople using structural equation modeling. The results of the analysis reveal that irrational beliefs lead to dysfunctional emotions, and in turn, …

Person-Supervisor Fit Antecedents: Self Determination Theory In Salesforce Turnover Intention, Ilgim Benoit, Jeffrey R. Foreman, Bonnie S. Guy

Atlantic Marketing Journal

In this paper, by utilizing Self-Determination Theory (SDT), we discuss possible antecedents for Person-Supervisor (PS) fit, which is important in decreasing turnover intentions of salespeople. Specifically, this is the first paper to discuss autonomy, relatedness and competence as social antecedent variables that are influential in predicting the PS fit, which is the congruence of values and goals of salespeople and sales managers, that ultimately decreases turnover intentions of salespeople. Survey results show that autonomy and relatedness are both positively related to salespeople’s perception of PS fit, and have indirect effects on turnover intention through PS fit. Accordingly, by enhancing relatedness, …

Digital Vs. Traditional: Comparing Sales Students' Initial Post- College Career Search Preferences Before And After Covid-19, Linda Mullen, Randy Stuart, Michael L. Thomas

Journal of Applied Marketing Theory

This study explores the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the

career search strategies of college students studying professional

sales. The research consists of a post-pandemic study that is

compared to a previous study conducted pre-pandemic in 2019. The

paper investigates the preference of sales students for digital

media versus face-to-face interactions in their career searches.

The pre-pandemic study revealed that while sales students

engaged with digital media, they still heavily relied on traditional

methods. The post-pandemic results differed primarily in students’

interviewing preferences. Despite the challenges posed by the

pandemic, students continue to utilize both online and traditional

resources. …

Covid's Positive Implications On Business-To-Business Salesperson Communication And Customer Interaction, Lucy Matthews, Diane R. Edmondson, Ryan Matthews, Frances Ann Stott, Tammy Bahmanziari

Atlantic Marketing Journal

This article aims to investigate the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on industrial salesperson communication with buyers, specifically focusing on the positive outcomes. The authors use a qualitative data collection approach based on grounded theory. Thirteen executives, primarily from the transportation industry, were interviewed. Based on the executive interviews, this study develops the pandemic-induced customer interaction model for the industrial market, drawing from the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) and innovation diffusion theory. This study is the first to examine the positive impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on business-to-business sales organization communication. This study contributes to the literature through the creation …

Analysis Of International Hotels’ Social Media Strategies, Gökhan Şener, Cihan Cobanoglu

Journal of Mediterranean Tourism Research

The hospitality industry and customer behaviors are unceasingly due to technology. Social media is thoroughly used by many people globally today and is a primary digital form of communication that includes these developments regarding hospitality, which is discernible in the most recent way. Eminently, it is being browsed for recreation, providing notable information and promotion for businesses. Social media generates outstanding opportunities for corporations to run critical digital marketing strategies. One of the essential considerations of enterprises is to grow their sales volumes, and advertising on digital platforms is a much more operative approach than any other platform nowadays, so …

Harvesting Growth -- An Internship Thesis, Emma Conover

Marketing Undergraduate Honors Theses

During the Summer of 2021, I had the privilege to Intern with Harvest Group in Rogers, Arkansas. During this 12-week internship, I was placed in the Client Services division and was a part of a consumables team that served several clients. I gained invaluable experience from this internship and developed both personally and professionally.

So, You Want To Start A Sales Center? An Organizational Learning Approach To Sales Center Formation And Growth, Cindy B. Rippe, Shannon Cummins, Olivia J. Degeorge

Marketing & Entrepreneurship Faculty Publications

Growth in demand for qualified salespeople has resulted in an increase in both university sales programs and the number of schools that want to transition their programs into sales centers and institutes. Despite this interest, few published articles provide direction on how to plan and launch a sales center. This research examines the views and experiences of existing and aspiring sales center directors to gain deeper insights into the tactics and techniques used for sales center creation and management. Leveraging an organizational learning theory approach, this work uses a mixed-method design to compare aspiring centers’ concerns with the experience and …

Is Sales Competition A Good Motivator Or A Bad Idea? The Underlying Mechanism Of Threat Appraisals, William J. Zahn Ph.D., Yi Peng, Willy Bolander, Bryan Hochstein, David Mathis

AMTP Proceedings 2022

The common logic for competition in sales organizations is simple: as salespeople compete with one another, the sales performance of the entire group should increase. Some prior research has supported this notion, while other studies suggested that competition may adversely affect employees. Our research finds both positions have merit, as a salesperson's perceptions of a competitive psychological climate (CPC) increase sales performance and turnover intentions. To explain this countervailing effect, we turn to cognitive appraisal theory to demonstrate that salesperson appraisal of the environment motivates their behavior. Specifically, salesperson threat appraisals act as a mediator between CPC to performance and …

Intention To Pursue A Sales Career: A Dyadic Study Of Students And Parents Extended Abstract, Joseph Little, Mark Kubik, Alexander King, Grant Weidman

AMTP Proceedings 2022

Typical career choice selection studies generally have been one sided focusing on students or parents independently. This dyadic study aims to analyze student and their parent influencers to determine what will be the strongest influencer of a student to pursue a career in sales. “Because the dyad is arguable the fundamental unit of interpersonal interaction and relations, family relations such as a parent and their child/student have a powerful dyadic component” (Kenny et al., 2006, p1). Therefore, understanding the influencers of this career choice selection may lead to interventions for increasing the number of students to pursue a career in …

When Should Sales Managers Get Involved In Their Salesteams' Transactions, Daniel E. Chavez

Theses and Dissertations--Marketing and Supply Chain

The existing literature on sales teams explores various aspects of team members and their effects on sales performance. The literature on sales management has described how managers can promote better results from salespeople. The question at the intersection of these two streams of literature – if managers should be part of sales teams -- has not been addressed and is what we explore. Using data from a Fortune 1,000 firm that operates automotive service stores across the US we test these effects. The data presents a natural experiment as sales teams with different compositions are assigned randomly to the customers. …

External And Internal Factors Of Sports Sponsorship Selling Cycles In North American Professional Sports, Dan Kaufmann

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In sports sponsorship, sellers and management seek to shorten their sales cycles to renew, upsell, and close new business. This research covers what professional sports organizations can do to help shorten the sales process. The study includes an industry analysis, literature review, and a mixed method survey of 212 people within the North American Sports Sponsorship Industry. The surveyed individuals are C-suite sponsorship salespeople and managers. These individuals work in the following professional sports leagues in North America: The National Football League (NFL), National Basketball League (NBA), National Hockey League (NHL), Major League Baseball (MLB), and Major League Soccer (MLS). …

Consumer Behavior And Coronavirus: How The Pandemic Transformed The American Shopper, Gina L. Riedell

Supply Chain Management Undergraduate Honors Theses

This study examines the changes in consumer shopping behavior resulting from the coronavirus pandemic in the United States as well as the effects on in-store and e-commerce sales and market share within the CPG industry. Most Americans faced some level of disruption throughout developments in the coronavirus outbreak. The study of their ongoing behavior changes in shopping preferences and purchasing decisions is revealed through CPG sales and offers insight into how it has affected the industry long-term. This paper analyzes the consumer behavior shifts in chronological order as new developments in the pandemic affected shopping decisions from January 2020 to …

Changing The Script: An Investigation Of How Gender Roles And Stereotypes Influence Women’S Career Choice In Marketing, Skylar Laine Read

Honors Theses

The purpose of this thesis is to investigate how the portrayal of gender roles and stereotypes have influenced young women growing up and how this representation has affected women’s career choices—specifically in sales. This thesis will explore the evolution of the Disney Princess, how the gender roles of these characters have influenced young girls’ perception of their role models, career choices, and perceptions of themselves in the workplace. This exploration is done through three different studies. The first is a case study of three Disney Princesses and the portrayal of women in their respective eras. The second study consists of …

Green Gains Green: A View Of How Sales Is Affected By Sustainability And Innovation In A B2b Setting, Justin Ruben Munoz

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

The Dissertation topic that I have chosen to study places both a prominent topic currently making waves in marketing with the field of marketing that has quickly become my specialty and my focus of research going forward. I have chosen to study green and sustainable measures that organizations currently put into practice along with how those sustainable initiatives affect the sales and revenue of that organization. The context of the study is in business-to-business (B2B). Specifically, this current research takes place in a new context that has seldom seen research in the current decade, as most of the research on …

An Analysis Of How The Goodyear Rubber And Tire Company Should Navigate The Covid-19 Pandemic, Nicholas Zubek, Alexander Morgan, Alyson Pekkola, Kayla Jancewicz, Thomas Rovnak Iii

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

The COVID-19 pandemic has affected the world in an unprecedented way with many countries being forced to shut down all non-essential businesses. A majority of people were laid-off or forced to work from home while the state mandated quarantine regulations. Due to fewer people and employees commuting on the roads, tire usage has decreased drastically. Companies, like The Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company, depend on high transportation and automobile usage and thus have been heavily impacted. In the nine months since 2020 began, Goodyear has reported sales of $2.367 billion dollars lower than their sales in 2019, which mostly came …

Three Essays On The Impact Of Cuteness On Consumer Behavior, Alexis Taeeun Yim

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

Over the last decade, the world has seen a rise in the popularity of cute stimuli. Adorable baby pictures, fluffy puppy videos, and whimsical emojis seem ever-present in social media news feeds and friends’ posts. In addition, products marketed toward adults that feature cute characters drive sales worth billions of dollars. The growing presence of cute stimuli in our daily lives is accompanied by emerging research on their social and behavioral impacts. Correspondingly, the current dissertation consists of three essays that contribute to the literature on cuteness by empirically testing the impacts of cuteness in the marketplace. To extend the …

Understanding And Motivating Salesperson Resilience, Valerie Good, Douglas E. Hughes, Alexander C. Labrecque

Peer Reviewed Articles

Prior research has shown that approximately half of salespeople fail to achieve their targets each year. Not only is the role difficult but also sales jobs are often marked by high levels of stress, rejection, and burnout. Thus, salesperson resilience is critical. However, a gap remains in our understanding of how resilience influences performance and how managers can motivate salespeople to be more resilient. To answer these questions, we collected survey data from 110 salespeople from a large firm based in the Midwest, along with objective effort and performance data provided by the company prior to and following a poor …

Essay 1: How We Feel: The Role Of Macro-Economic Sentiment In Advertising Spending-Sales Relationship; Essay 2: It Was The Best Of Times; It Was The Worst Of Times: The Effect Of Emotional Uncertainty And Arousal On Healthy Food Choices, Leila Khoshghadam

Theses and Dissertations in Business Administration

Essay 1: Controversies regarding the advertising spending-sales relationship have spawned many studies in marketing. Previous research on macroeconomic influencers of this relationship has focused mostly on objective macroeconomic indicators such as cyclical contraction and expansion. Extending these previous studies, the current research argues that sales response to advertising is also contingent upon the pervasive feelings present in the macroeconomic environment, above and beyond the influence from objective macroeconomic factors. Specifically, it argues that future outlook negativity and uncertainty in macroeconomic sentiment can affect the ad spending-sales relationship. Analyzing sales and advertising spending data for salty snacks in conjunction with macroeconomic …

Body Language And Sales, Lindsay Larson, Adam Puckett, Timothy C. Heinze

AMTP Proceedings 2020

Utilizing professional sales competition videos taken from a university Sales program, the current study investigates the link between nonverbal gestures made by salespeople and performance scores given by professional sales recruiters watching their role plays. The results of this study may suggest a relationship between gesture use and perceptions of sales ability.

The Effect Of University Sales Education On The First After-College Sales Job, Ilya Feldman

Honors Theses and Capstones

This research investigates the relationship between the amount of sales education and the job performance of the recent UNH graduates on the first after-college sales job. The overarching hypothesis suggests that more sales education leads to better sales job performance. The results of the research found this correlation to be positive and significant. Also, this research found that job performance indicators that are affected the most significantly by the amount of sales education are confidence, passion, commitment, and on-target earnings. Moreover, it identifies the categories of sales education that were determined to be the most crucial in better first after- …

When Objective Price Information Is Not Available: Impact Of Unpublished Or Missing Prices On The Purchase Journey For High Costs, High Involvement Products, Thomas J. Dammrich

College of Business Theses and Dissertations

Every model of the consumer purchase journey includes an evaluation phase, during which consumers search for product attributes including price. While much has been written about search, knowledge uncertainty, and the role of price in continued search and purchase intent, very little, if any, empirical work has been done to understand the impact on the path to purchase when objective price is not available. This study undertakes a field experiment with random assignment in a natural setting to examine the impacts on consumer behavior related to continued search, lead generation and purchase intent when objective price is not available. The …

Gilliam Candy Company - Paducah, Kentucky (Sc 3387), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

Manuscript Collection Finding Aids

Finding aid and scans (Click on "Additional Files" below) for Manuscripts Small Collection 3387. Letters of Cleve Gilliam of the Gilliam Candy Company, “Manufacturers of ‘Blue Grass’ Brand Candies,” Paducah, Kentucky, to Edwin Larrance, Indianapolis, Indiana, whose health problems are inhibiting his work as the company’s Indiana sales representative. Gilliam complains of the decline in business and of the further difficulty of maintaining profits while supplying free sample boxes of candy. The final letter praises Larrance but terminates the company’s arrangement with him.

Intercollegiate Wine Business Invitational, Nathan Saragoza, Ally Bushman, Cassidy Robinson, Hanna Bingham, Sam Weymouth, Luca Mallon

Student Engagement Posters

Nathan Saragoza, Ally Bushman, Cassidy Robinson, Hanna Bingham, Sam Weymouth, and Luca Mallon discuss student engagement at Linfield College with regard to their participation in the Intercollegiate Wine Business Invitational.

How To Overcome Emotional Exhaustion In Sales Settings, Lucy Matthews, Diane R. Edmondson

Atlantic Marketing Association Proceedings

No abstract provided.

Exploratory Insights Into Cross-Cultural On-Line Shopping Differences Between U.S. And French Millennials And Generation Zs, Steven M. Cox, Bradley W. Brooks

AMTP Proceedings 2019

Online retail sales have shown double-digit growth in the U.S. for the last decade lead by millennials and more recently generation Z. While extensive research has been done exploring U.S. online shopping behaviors of these generations, little cross-cultural work has been done. This paper explores the differences between the U.S. and French millennial and gen z online shoppers. The research focused on four questions; was there a difference in the number of times per week that individuals shopped online, the percentage of shopping funds spent online versus in store, the types of products purchased online, and the percentage of low …