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The article describes the activities of Miles Sherover, an American entrepreneur, president of the Hanover Sales Corporation, who served as a sales agent of the Spanish Republic in the United States in 1937-1938. During the study period, M. Sherover, being authorized by the Government of the Second Republic, participated in a number of initiatives of the leadership of the Spanish Republic, such as Spanish-American negotiations on the security of the finances and property of American companies in Spain and the sale of silver reserves of the Bank of Spain to the United States in order to pay for the purchase of military equipment, civilian goods and raw materials with the proceeds. In addition to being as a middleman between the Spanish Republic and the United States in the trade, M. Sherover was actively engaged in political activities, the consequences of which discredited the Embassy of the Republic in Washington, as the Spanish Ambassador Fernando de los Rios, who was wary of the entrepreneur, regularly reported to the Prime Minister of the Spanish Republic Juan Negrin and Foreign Minister Julio Alvarez del Vayo. In general, the activities of Miles Sherover were contradictory: in order to help the Second Republic, he was engaged not only in issues of Spanish-American trade during the war, but also was carried out active political activities that went beyond his official powers and put the diplomacy of the Second Republic in the United States in a difficult position

Agent is one of very important assets for distributors. A better knowledge of the agents and their behavior is required, particularly to support decisions related to the company's business strategy and to manage a better relationship with distributors. Such knowledge can be obtained by classifying agents based on their behavior through historical data, such as the sale and purchase transaction data. One approach that can be done is a segmentation approach can be done by dividing the agents into several segments. In this paper, Data Mining techniques i.e. K-means clustering method is exploredto classify sales agents. By implementing k-means, the knowledge about the best agents can be acquired along with the agents that have least contribution to the distributor.

We analyze a salesforce principal‐agent model where both the firm and sales agent have limited information on the effort‐dependent demand distribution, creating two‐sided ambiguity. Under the max–min decision criteria, the firm offers a contract to the agent who exerts unobservable effort to influence the demand distribution. We formulate the problem as a semi‐infinite program and use the agent's shadow prices to construct the least expensive contract. Next, we use the least expensive contract to create a non‐linear optimization model, which provides the firm's optimal robust contract. Due to the problem's complexity, we focus our attention on the class of distribution‐free contracts. We show that using a distribution‐free contract is a necessary condition for achieving the first‐best outcome. Our analysis reveals that the index of dispersion determines whether the optimal distribution‐free contract is linear or quadratic. Finally, we extend our model to incorporate quota‐bonus contracts and inventory considerations. Overall, our results demonstrate that variance information plays a critical role in designing contracts under distributional ambiguity and provides justification for the application of quadratic contracts in practice.

Purpose Previous sales research remains limited to analyzing the influence of sales activities with sales agent tenure. To date, research on this subject has focused on the downstream direct or indirect impact of sales activities to sales performance, failing to consider whether sales activities impact a sales agent’s tenure. This paper aims to assess the effect of sales activities on sales performance and sales agent engagement on sales agent tenure through the lens of autonomous motivation to better understand sales activities as an overall sales process antecedent Design/methodology/approach Through the utilization of secondary sales operational data, this research demonstrates the influence of sales activities on multiple sales agent outcomes, while depicting the importance of sales managers creating an autonomous motivational climate. Findings This research demonstrates the direct relationship between sales activities to job engagement and sales performance. However, sales activities have a negative relationship to sales agent tenure, which require a sales manager to create an autonomous motivation to mediate the relationship between sales activities and sales agent tenure. Practical implications Organizations are provided with sample methodology and analysis to better determine how a culture grounded in autonomous motivation mediates sales activities and can be a catalyst for improving sales agent tenure. Then, provide a better understanding of the effect of actual sales activities on important sales department work outcomes. Originality/value The model is the first to test holistically the influence of sales activities on sales performance, sales agent engagement and tenure jointly by using actual secondary operational data. This study provides a glimpse of the real world balance a sales manager must consider between climate and activities. Plus, this study takes initial steps to study sales agent engagement, an under-researched construct in sales research.

Salesforce compensation and pricing decisions have invoked the interest of several academicians and practitioners for a long period of time. However, dilemma of whether the pricing decisions should be made by the firm or delegated to the sales agent, especially the overconfident agent, is still unexplored. This study tries to investigate the problems associated with this dilemma by conducting a thorough study of the scenario, it studies a supply chain that the rational manufacturer hiring an overconfident sales agent to sell its products, the agent might overestimate the demand, or underestimate the variability of the demand. These behaviors are characterized as ability-based and precision-based overconfidence respectively. The models are designed for centralized pricing and delegated pricing settings, and the sensitivity analysis are conducted. Moreover, comparative studies have also been conducted to highlight the impacts of the two types of overconfidence on the compensation decisions under different pricing strategies. It was found out that, the manufacturer favors centralized pricing, while the sales agent prefers delegated pricing. The final decisions of both sides deviate considerably from the rational scenario, overconfidence prompts the agent to exert more efforts, which ultimately enhances manufacturer’s profits that the manufacturer should hire a more overconfident agent, while not guaranteeing a higher commission rate. Overconfidence leads to the decline of the agent’s actual utility, and the loss amount increases with the overconfidence level. The influences of the both types of overconfidence are substitutable. Managerial insights are also provided for various scenarios and propositions along with numerical illustration of the finding.

We investigate a situation where a firm employing a sales agent faces moral hazard with respect to prospecting effort and the threat of collusion between agent and customer. We show that the firm should offer more pricing authority to the agent the more severe the moral hazard problem, although doing so further expands the agent’s discretion. Nevertheless, restricting the agent’s pricing authority such that he cannot sell to low-valuation customers is typically optimal to prevent collusion. We derive optimal collusion-proof contracts, describe conditions under which collusion arises in equilibrium, and study the optimal interaction between delegation, incentive pay, and the firm’s installed auditing technology. This paper was accepted by Juanjuan Zhang, marketing.

Purpose This paper aims to examine the extent to which exporter difficulties in evaluating foreign sales agent performance affect export performance, either directly or as mediated by opportunism. Design/methodology/approach In developing the hypotheses, the study integrates transaction cost theory and principal-agent theory. The proposed relationships between the constructs (performance ambiguity, opportunism, and export performance) are examined for a multi-industry sample of Norwegian exporters in their dealings with foreign sales agents. A survey of 410 qualified key informants yielded 101 usable questionnaires – a response rate of 24.6%. Structural equation modeling is used for data analysis and hypothesis testing. Findings The analysis finds support for the hypothesis that sales agent performance ambiguity relates negatively to export performance. While performance ambiguity is positively related to sales agent opportunistic behavior, opportunism does not significantly influence export performance. It seems that the adaptation costs created by the evaluation problem are of greater importance in reducing export performance than the costs created by opportunistic behavior. Research limitations/implications In focusing on the core dimensions of sales agent performance in foreign markets, other factors influencing export performance are not included. The fact that small Norwegian firms dominate the sample, further limits application and generalization of the findings. Hence, results should be interpreted with caution and the study considered as investigative. Nevertheless, the results indicate to export managers and theory potentially deteriorating dimensions in the relationship between exporter and foreign independent sales agent. Originality/value To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first to examine how performance ambiguity and opportunistic behavior among foreign sales agents affect export performance. By concentrating on basic deteriorating dimensions, the study adds to the few that focus on inhibiting drivers of exporter – foreign–sales–agent relationships.

Based on 10 authentic audio-recorded data, the study aims to explore the dynamics of the insurance sales agent-client interactions in transformational China’s rural areas from a socio-cultural perspective. It sets out from generalizing the specific discursive patterns from moves and steps [1,2] of the utterances made in the agent-client interactions, governed by communicative purposes. The first move, warming up, deserves more attention as it serves crucial function in the interactions. The paper delineates the different types and functions of warming up, and relates them to the underlying operating mechanism of rural agent-client interactions; another vital move, establishing credentials and trust, has also been analyzed in details, since trust is the pillar stone in the conclusion of insurance sales. Through the analysis, the study aims to depict the transforming nature of the modern Chinese rural society, where old and traditional value system has been, for a large part, demolished, while new value system is yet to be established.

In this study, we characterize the optimal compensation scheme for a firm that sells a single product with a limited stocking quantity through a sales agent. Our focus is on understanding how the supply–demand mismatch costs affect the firm’s optimal compensation scheme. There are two main findings. First, under the deterministic demand response, the classical optimality result of the convex increasing compensation scheme breaks with the consideration of supply–demand mismatch costs. Instead, the optimal compensation is S‐shaped under certain conditions. Second, under the stochastic demand response, the classical optimality result of the menu of linear compensation schemes fails to hold with the consideration of supply–demand mismatch costs. Instead, the optimal compensation schemes consist of a menu of linear compensation coupled with a penalty of the agent’s forecast error.

The current research compares sole-identity versus dualidentity consumers in their responses to different retail persuasion attempts that occur in situations with low versus high ulterior motives. We examine different consumer responses (e.g., interaction time, perceived friendliness, future interaction intentions, and actual purchase behavior). We find that dual-identity consumers (those individuals with sales experience who have both a consumer and agent identity available) tend to automatically activate their agent identity which makes them more likely to take the perspective of the sales agent as compared to sole-identity consumers (individuals without sales experience who only have a consumer identity available). Dual-identity consumers show greater sensitivity to ulterior motives as exhibited by more accurate responses when persuasion cues suggest that ulterior motives are low, but not high. In contrast, sole-identity consumers are insensitive to differing levels of ulterior motives. The current research further demonstrates that perspective-taking can mitigate sole-identity consumers' defensive reactions which can increase their responses to sales agents' persuasion attempts with low ulterior motives.

The choice between safe and risky assets represents behavior towards risk: more risk‐averse investors buy more safe assets. We develop and test a general model that applies this intuition to the time allocation between risky effort and risk‐free leisure under linear incentives. When risk increases with effort, risk‐averse agents choose less effort, but when risk is independent of effort, effort choice is unaffected by risk preferences. In many incentive contracts, income risk is multiplicative with, rather than additive to effort, sales commissions being one example. In such cases, lower effort by the risk‐averse is a hitherto undocumented behavior towards risk (JEL C91, M52, J33)

Purpose Clean cookstoves have emerged over the past half century as an important technological innovation to reduce indoor air pollution from cooking with traditional fuels. However, widespread adoption remains elusive, suggesting the need for other measures to accompany dissemination of clean cookstoves. Despite knowledge about health impacts of cookstove smoke and a body of evidence pointing to the efficacy of health education for supporting behaviour change, health messaging is relatively unexplored in the cookstove sector. This paper aims to present findings from action research in Cambodia that investigates how social innovation around positive and negative health messaging influences demand for clean biomass cookstoves. Design/methodology/approach An action research approach was taken, involving the design and implementation of a health marketing campaign alongside promotion of a clean burning biomass cookstove. Four communes were assigned as intervention communes and a fifth as the control group. Among the four intervention communes, two were provided with positive health messaging and the other two with negative health messaging. The methods included a baseline study of 381 households using structured surveys, roll-out of the health campaign, in-depth interviews with households and sales agents, ten focus group discussions with households and an endline structured survey of all 381 households. Findings Neither the type (positive/negative) nor the intensity of the health campaigns had a significant impact on stove sales. Sales results show no pattern in either variable, and sales in the control commune were not lower than in communes where health campaigns were used. However, health messaging did increase awareness about health impacts of cooking with traditional biomass burning stoves. For almost all communes, in particular those that received positive-tone messages, an increased awareness of the health impact of cooking with traditional biomass burning stoves was observed. Cookstove price and personal characteristics of individual sales agents were shown to be the strongest factors affecting sales. Research limitations/implications The study relied on sales agents to deliver pre-assigned health messages. However, some sales agents did not follow instructions in delivering the messages, which made it difficult to compare the efficacy of the different campaign approaches. Due to a delay in the study, the campaign overlapped with the planting season when disposable incomes of famers is typically limited, reducing their ability to purchase a new cookstove. The 10-week duration of the campaign may not have been long enough to see an impact on sales, particularly for a product viewed as expensive for the average consumer. Practical implications The skill and motivation of individual sales agents can greatly affect cookstove marketing campaigns. The efficacy of individual sales agents appears to have been the strongest factor affecting sales, with the most successful sales agent using a combination of messages, including health information, to convince households to purchase the stoves. This warrants further study; designers of stove promotion campaigns might be able to learn from the behaviour and strategies of highly effective sales agents. Price continues to be an important factor influencing the adoption of clean cookstoves. In Cambodia, the main drivers of cookstove purchase (beside the sales agent) were availability of disposable income, time and fuel saved. Social implications Health messaging was shown to have minimal effect on cookstove purchase. Indeed, it is clear that cookstove adoption is influenced by multiple factors linked in complex ways. This is a very important finding for public health workers, who need to think more broadly about how they achieve the public health goals associated with cleaner cooking through approaches that do not necessarily focus on individual health goals. Originality/value Although health messaging has shown promise as an approach for supporting behaviour change in other sectors, it has not been widely studies in the context of clean cookstove adoption. This paper contributes to filling this gap and suggests some lines of enquiry for future research. The study pioneered innovative methods such as action research, use of graphic images and using established local sales agents as means of communicating messages about the health risks of cooking smoke and the benefits of improved cookstoves.

Peer-to-peer lending (P2P lending) is growing rapidly in Indonesia in line with the advanced of digital technology. This new platform is expected to support the Indonesian government strategy in increasing financial inclusion. Although the new platform is easily accessible using the mobile phone, some Indonesians are still reluctant to use the apps by themselves. There is an urgent need of human touch to educate and give appropriate information about the system. The role of direct sales agents of the P2P lending platform is key to gaining the trust of the prospective borrower. The P2P lending platform must be able to develop and implement apps to monitor activities and increase productivity of its direct sales agent. The purpose of this research is to analyze the implementation of sales management activity apps to increase the productivity of the direct sales agent, simplify the application procedure, shorten the approval time, and finally increase the financial inclusion in Indonesia. The object of the research is MODALKU, one of the largest P2P lending platforms in South East Asia. The target user of the apps is all the direct sales agents who are approaching prospective borrowers from the ultra-micro segment market. The result of the research showed that the direct sales agents play an important role in educating the prospective borrower in using the technology and explaining the benefit of the loan application in supporting their businesses.

Small-scale food animal production has been celebrated as a means of economic mobility and improved food security but the use of veterinary antibiotics among these producers may be contributing to the spread of antibiotic resistance in animals and humans. In order to improve antibiotic stewardship in this sector, it is critical to identify the drivers of producers&rsquo, antibiotic use. This study assessed the determinants of antibiotic use in small-scale food animal production through simulated client visits to veterinary supply stores and surveys with households that owned food animals (n = 117) in Ecuador. Eighty percent of households with food animals owned chickens and 78% of those with chickens owned fewer than 10 birds. Among the households with small-scale food animals, 21% reported giving antibiotics to their food animals within the last six months. Simulated client visits indicated that veterinary sales agents frequently recommended inappropriate antibiotic use, as 66% of sales agents recommended growth promoting antibiotics, and 48% of sales agents recommended an antibiotic that was an inappropriate class for disease treatment. In contrast, few sales agents (3%) were willing to sell colistin, an antibiotic banned for veterinary use in Ecuador as of January 2020, which supports the effectiveness of government regulation in antibiotic stewardship. The cumulative evidence provided by this study indicates that veterinary sales agents play an active role in promoting indiscriminate and inappropriate use of antibiotics in small-scale food animal production.

We analyze when a firm should delegate pricing authority to a sales agent who is hired to exert non-observable effort in order to search for customers. A successful search yields that the agent becomes better informed than the firm about customers’ willingness to pay, which favors delegation. However, an agent with pricing authority might grant unnecessary price discounts to avoid personal costs from haggling with customers, such as opportunity costs of time or psychological costs, which can undermine the efficacy of delegation. We describe conditions under which the firm favors delegation even in the presence of substantial haggling costs and explain how the delegation decision interacts with performance measure quality. In addition, we show that the interplay between delegation and incentive pay is not univocal. Delegation and incentive pay can be complements if haggling costs are small, but will be substitutes if haggling costs are large. In the former case, the firm wants to avoid unnecessary price discounts by stipulating a large bonus to the agent for selling at a high price. In the latter case, the agent always grants the maximum feasible price discount and benefits from reciprocal customer behavior (e.g., leaving a tip or offering an in-kind gift or favor), which provides the agent with implicit incentives to search for customers.

Scavengers are one of the biggest social problems for Jakarta. Scavenger areas have existed in Jakarta for a long time such as the Gang Saibun RT 08/09 Jatipadang, South Jakarta. Here, more than 300 scavengers illegally occupy vacant areas owned by the Regional Government. Scavenger children are exposed to problems including 1) economic poverty, and 2) attitude or character problems arising from their negative environments. In addition to the issues facing outsiders ttempting to aid the scavenger communities, there are additional problems which must be addressed. This study aims to provide a descriptive evaluation of the efforts to implement Kelas Mimpi entrepreneurship programs which seek to empower the scavenger children of Jatipadang, carried out by the Community Service Team at Al Azhar University of Indonesia. The study concludes that the entrepreneurship program was successfully implemented because it combined two integrated programs: 1) Entrepreneur Hard Skills Program (Online Sales Agent); and 2) Soft Skills Program (motivation, character building & service excellent). Moreover, this program succeeded in providing positive impacts in various measurable ways including 1) economic improvement of participants through online business transactions, 2) improvement of the positive character of participants, and 3) increased ability to provide excellent services as online sales agents. Keywords: entrepreneur, community development, scavenger children

The rapid growth in omnichannel (e.g., Web, call center, sales agent, store) shopping and the need to effectively allocate resources across channels are prompting managers and researchers to better understand cross-channel effects, that is, the effects of marketing efforts in one distribution channel on shopping outcomes in other channels. We develop a broad set of hypotheses about cross-channel effects based on channel richness and influence roles (informative, persuasive). To test the hypotheses, we model the effects (own and cross) of channel marketing efforts on shopping outcomes in different channels through a simultaneous equation system. We estimate these models using data from the auto insurance industry that comprises the exclusive agent, the independent agent, the Web, and the call center channels. Our results offer novel insights. They show that cross-channel effects and elasticities are significant and asymmetric. While the effect of marketing efforts in a channel on shopping outcomes in a dissimilar (with a different primary influence role) channel is positive (e.g., exclusive agent, the Web, and the call center channels are complementary), the magnitudes of the cross-channel effects are asymmetric. Similarly, while the effect of marketing efforts in a channel on shopping outcomes in a similar (with the same primary influence role) channel is negative (e.g., independent agent and exclusive agent channels are substitutional), they are also asymmetric. Exclusive agent efforts have a greater negative effect on the outcomes of independent agent efforts than vice versa. Based on the results, we develop a channel influence vs. influenceability analysis tool for managers to better plan their channel efforts. We also illustrate a resource allocation model that shows substantial incremental profits from the reallocation of marketing efforts based on our model with cross-channel effects relative to a model without cross-channel effects.

We analytically study a value chain consisting of three independent parties: a manufacturer, a retailer, and a sales agent. Either the manufacturer or the retailer may compensate the sales agent, and a variety of supply contracts may be used between the manufacturer and the retailer: price‐only, buyback, and channel rebate. We first compare the efficiency of different supply contracts under either compensation scheme, and then compare the two compensation schemes when executed with the best performing supply contract for the parameter range. Under manufacturer compensation, we find that the price‐only contract may perform well in encouraging sales effort and it can dominate the distribution channel coordinating contracts in certain parameter (production and sales effort costs) range. Under retailer compensation, we find that, within the value chain, the buyback contract performs better in quantity coordination and the channel rebate contract performs better in sales effort coordination. Interestingly, our results show that an appropriate supply contract in support of a salesforce compensation scheme helps mitigate the inefficiency brought by the asymmetric sales effort information, and can lead to value chain first best for a wide range of parameters. When this is not the case, manufacturer compensation executed via the price‐only contract dominates for stable demand markets and retailer compensation executed via channel rebate contract dominates when the market’s uncertain outcomes are distinct.

The purpose of this study is to examine the perceptions of sales agent representatives’ service cannibalization and its possible outcomes (effort, job satisfaction, job performance and job alienation) resulting from ICT especially internet adoption as an alternative distributional channel in tourism industry. In addition, causal relationships between these possible outcomes have been tried to be revealed. According to field studies carried out in 2016 with 387 group A sales representatives working in travel agencies that are members of TÜRSAB located in the European side of Istanbul, it was determined that the relational capital levels of the sales representatives were relatively low while the service cannibalization perceptions reached a moderate result. A regression analysis was conducted to test hypotheses established in the theoretical and framework of the research. Service cannibalization has been identified as a predictor of effort, job satisfaction, job performance and job alienation. Another result reached through the study is that the level of relational capital as a partial mediator between sales agent’s service cannibalization perception and its outcomes. At the end of the work, various suggestions were made to Travel Agencies.

From 1969 to 1985 ASM transformed from a European sales agent into a multinational ‘original equipment manufacturer.’ This meant that ASM increasingly began to focus on designing and manufacturing its own equipment. Revenues grew from 1.3 million Dutch guilders in 1971 to 353 million in 1985, while in this same period the company’s staff expanded from a handful to 1868 employees. Innovating and selling its own original equipment propelled ASM’s growth and globalized its operations. Initially, however, the company did not pursue innovation as a goal in its own right. The company evolved into an equipment supplier for the chip industry in the wake of an accumulation of opportunities, new experiences, and business strategies. Throughout this transformation, ASM would also retain some of the more idiosyncratic characteristics from its past as a sales agent.

In this paper, we investigate the joint decision on production and pricing, and the compensation strategy of a supply chain, where the manufacturer relies on a risk-averse sales agent to sell the products. The sales outcome is determined by the sales agent's selling effort and the product price. Most of the previous research about salesforce assumes that the risk attitude to an agent is known to each other and the salvage value is a constant. In this study, we have considered that the salvage value is a function of inventory, and both of the sales agent's selling effort and risk attitude are their private information on the general framework of dual information asymmetric. With the help of revelation principle and principal-agent theory, we have been able to derive the optimal compensation contracts, and joint decision on production and pricing for the manufacturer. Analyzing them and comparing to the symmetric scenario, we found that only the optimal production strategy and the manufacturer's profit depended on the variation rate of salvage value. When the manufacturer comes across asymmetric risk-averse sales agents its profit decreases, whereas the sales agent with private information obtains higher income but exerts less effort, which implies the value of information. The results also mean that the manufacturer should not only focus on offering a lower commission rate to the more risk-averse sales agent, but also on screening his risk information.

This study analyzes Value Added Tax disputes on Non-Funded Income at Banking Service Entrepreneurs with a case study of the Supreme Court Reconsideration Decision Number 628/B/PK/PJK/2019 to find out how the Judge decided the dispute. The research method used is juridical normative with statutory, case, and analytical approaches. The data used are laws, Judges' Decisions, and Doctrine. The data were collected by means of document studies, the results of data processing were narrated descriptively with the IREAC law application model: Issues, Rules, Evidence, Application, Conclusion. The results of the research are the tax authorities' opinion that the Selling Agent Fee-Invest Services-Services Priority account as the name implies is income from sales agent service fees as Non-Funded Income which is an object of VAT, Judges based on the evidence in court argued that the account was for banking services that were not objects VAT. In determining taxes, tax authorities are based on formal principles, while judges are based on material principles or the principle of substance over the form. Judges' decisions that are legally enforceable are still a material source of law, and should be used as a consideration for the tax authorities in determining taxes for similar cases so that they do not become tax disputes that must be resolved through acting legal measures that require time, effort and other resources.

Although people generally prefer persuasive messages that align with their self-construal, the present research explores a seemingly paradoxical situation wherein mismatched message that does not align with people's self-construal is positively received. Given sufficient cognitive capacity to trigger persuasion knowledge—the knowledge of persuasion tactics that are encountered in the marketplace, the use of an individually focused persuasion attempt on consumers with an interdependent self-construal results in greater levels of trust in the sales agent. In contrast, consumers with an independent self-construal respond similarly to different types of persuasion attempts. Persuasion knowledge is a mechanism for variations in trust. The findings replicate those of prior work, and the robustness of the effects is confirmed via small-scale meta-analysis.

In the beginning of the twentieth century, as Americans erupted in righteous indignation over the flagrant abuses of monopoly utilities, utility executives responded by developing several strategies to improve public opinion, rein in regulation, and thwart public ownership. One of the most widely used and successful of these strategies was selling gas, electricity, and telephone company stock directly to customers. To reach these local customers, utility managers required their employees to peddle stock directly to their friends, family, and customers. Using this method, utilities reached a large number of Americans who would not normally have set up a brokerage account or been solicited by a securities sales agent. By farming these interstitial regions of America’s financial landscape, utility executives harvested millions of dollars in capital, but as executives explicitly made clear, the goal of customer stock ownership was not to raise capital but to raise political support. By the crash of 1929, utilities directly sold stock to 20 percent of the total number of stockholding Americans directly through customer stock ownership programs and not through traditional brokerage firms. This article situates the development of customer stock ownership in the political economic context from which it emerged as an organizational response, reveals the social and organizational processes by which utility monopolies sold stock, and appraises the effect of customer stock ownership on antimonopoly sentiment in America.

With a large nationwide retailer, we run a natural field experiment to measure the effects of energy use information disclosure, customer rebates, and sales agent incentives on demand for energy-efficient durable goods. Although a combination of large rebates plus sales incentives substantially increases market share, information and sales incentives alone each have zero statistical effect and explain at most a small fraction of the low baseline market share. Sales agents strategically comply only partially with the experiment, targeting information to more interested consumers but not discussing energy efficiency with the disinterested majority. These results suggest that seller-provided information is not a major barrier to energy-efficiency investments at current prices in this context. Data, as supplemental material, are available at http://dx.doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2015.2327 . This paper was accepted by John List, behavioral economics.

The delivery of basic health products and services remains abysmal in many parts of the world where child mortality is high. This paper shows the results from a large-scale randomized evaluation of a novel approach to health care delivery. In randomly selected villages, a sales agent was locally recruited and incentivized to conduct home visits, educate households on essential health behaviors, provide medical advice and referrals, and sell preventive and curative health products. Results after 3 years show substantial health impact: under 5-years child mortality was reduced by 27 percent at an estimated average cost of $68 per life-year saved. (JEL I12, I18, J13, O15, O18)

The rapid development of the national economy and banking external environment, causing banking activities not only engage in activities that are primary (core business), but also non-core business such as agency activities as Mutual Fund Sales Agent (APERD) and Bancassurance. In the concept of the common law system, the agency as the center of all business affairs as a business owner can not do your own business, so delegating affairs to agents as a mediator. There is a legal relationships and trust (fiduciary relationship) between the principal and the agent acting on behalf principal. In addition, there is an element of supervision of the principal to the agent so that the agent must comply under the supervision of the principal. Supervision is an essential element that determines the existence of an agency relationship, so it is a vertical relationship between principal and agent. The principal control components in the form of action directives, orders, limitation of power agents and monitoring the agent's action.

Purpose: This research investigates how to manage and organize existing employees when launching a solution sales strategy, specifically addressing whether it is possible to migrate existing sales representatives active in product sales to solution sales, and whether it is possible to combine the roles.Methodology/approach: A case-based approach was applied to a multinational firm, engaged in business-to-business sales that simultaneously launched a solution sales strategy in 17 countries. In-depth interviews with 29 managers and sales representatives were performed to inductively identify why some countries succeeded in the launch, while others did not.Findings: Because of fundamental differences in approach between solution and product sales, those countries where the solutions and product businesses were separated performed better. The difference in required capabilities and mindset meant that migrating sales representatives from product to solution sales is problematic.Research implications: T...

Conducting business by using the internet has become an everyday occurrence in all spheres of economy, as well as in the tourism sector. There is an increasing number of agencies in the world that conduct their business almost completely on-line. The aim of this research was to examine what characterizes the process of implementation of electronic business with tourist agencies in Serbia on the sample of 65 companies, and whether it differs depending on certain business characteristics. For that purpose, EBusTour model was developed that consists of 14 items grouped into four categories: online communication, online promotion, impact on sales and working hours reduction vs. sales improvement. As far as tourist agencies in Serbia are concerned, the results of the application of EBusTour model show that the most common activity in this field is basic online promotion (website implementation), followed by effects on sales. The paper also investigates whether there are differences in e-business implementation in relation to the characteristics such as: years in business, the type of licence (tour operator or sales agent) and the type of market (incoming, outgoing or combined).

Despite documented health benefits of household water treatment and storage (HWTS), achieving sustained use remains challenging. In prior evaluations of a long-term HWTS program in Haiti, multiple marketing interventions failed to increase use or had prohibitively high costs. Using mobile phones is a potentially cost-effective way to change HWTS behavior. We conducted a randomized experiment to evaluate the impact of sending short-message service (SMS) messages to promote household chlorination in this program in Haiti. Households (n = 1327) were randomly assigned to: One of four SMS frequencies, one of ten behavioral constructs, &ldquo, cholera&rdquo, or &ldquo, disease&rdquo, framing, and one or zero household visits from a sales agent. During the three-month campaign, there were no statistically significant relationships between the four outcomes related to chlorine purchases and any SMS frequency, any behavioral construct, or either &ldquo, framing. Receiving one visit increased the probability of purchasing a bottle of chlorine by 17.1 percentage points (p &lt, 0.001) but did not affect subsequent purchase behavior. Costs of managing the SMS campaign were higher than expected. SMS campaigns may not be cost-effective behavior change interventions in certain contexts. If pursued, we recommend simple interventions, timed with the target behavior, and tailored to mobile phone usage patterns of the target population.

Many Austrian small and medium-sized enterprise (SMEs) in the manufacturing sector opt for expanding to further markets. Especially for the automotive industry, Mexico and the USA are attractive locations. The purpose of this paper is to identify a strategy for an Austrian SME in the automotive sector for its business expansion to Mexico and the USA. Therefore, factors influencing the expansion strategy, as well as operational measures increasing the success rate of the company are identified. Additionally, it is analysed if a combined market entry and strategy formulation for both countries is recommendable. The aim is to present solid results regarding how the company should tackle the upcoming challenges for its strategic direction of internationalisation. For this purpose, a literature review and an empirical qualitative study were chosen as a main method. Based on the results of the study the company is provided with recommendations on how to design its strategy and which factors are to be considered when opting for the two markets. Based on the research the company is advised to consider both markets as individual and parallel processes.

On an average trip to the supermarket, a consumer is exposed to more than 20,000 products, usually in less than 30 min. The modern supermarket is a self-service shopping experience, and packaging plays a critical role in influencing consumers at the point of sale. The product package, now, at once plays the role of the merchant, shopkeeper, and sales agent; the product package is now the storyteller for the brand. Most research into product packages focuses on the psychology of visual package design and consumer perceptions of what the product contained within the package will be like based on the visual stimulus of the package. But product packages are not one-sided, so this study instead focuses on the branded text on product packages. Package stories are narrative texts found on consumer packaged goods that serve as marketing communications tools, beyond labeling requirements. Beyond indirectly alluding to the importance of stories for packaged branded goods, marketing theory offers no frameworks or archetypes for the strategic understanding of brand stories. Thus, a simple research question “What types of stories to packages tell?” has no readily available answer. As such, this research took to an exploratory investigation of the brand stories as told on product packages, with the goal of uncovering a typology of package stories. A grounded content analysis was conducted on the package stories on more than 300 product packages, representing 19 different product categories in the FMCG sector. A two-level typology of storylines was created. It was found that all package stories first orient toward one of three time horizons: the past, the present, or the future. Within each of these temporal orientations lie a number of key plot foci, and it is proposed that there are ultimately 15 such archetypal plotlines across the three orientations. Each of these archetypes ultimately articulates what, at the core, the brand story is about. The first implication of this research is that product package and brand stories follow patterns, and understanding stories as formulaic constructions implies that brand stories can be managerially engineered for strategic purposes. Additionally, this research also suggests that certain stories become more prominent for certain product categories than others. The second implication, thus, is that the brand story be considered as a product attribute that can be engineered as a tool for competitive positioning.

Examines perceptions of service cannibalization on sales agents and ICT adoption.Identifies different typologies of sales agents.Classifies sales agents into five groups.The differences could arise due to the level of ICT adoption of the travel agency.Makes practical recommendations for retail travel agencies. The purpose of this study was to examine the perceptions of sales agents of service cannibalization resulting from ICT adoption. Specifically, a latent class segmentation approach based on sales agents perceptions was applied to identify distinct types of sales agents groups and understand the differences between these segments in terms of sales agents' perceptions of service sabotage and the use of ICT. Data from 497 sales agents, who voluntarily participated in the study and completed a questionnaire in an interviewer's presence, were collected from travel agencies in Spain. The results obtained classify sales agents into five groups: innovative, cannibalized, non-cannibalized, information provider and traditional. The major theoretical finding of the study is that not every sales agent perceives service cannibalization to the same degree. The differences could arise due to the level of ICT adoption of the travel agency (website, general information, Internet contracting, customized service, after-sales service payments systems) and the type of organization in which the sales agent works (independent or consortia/franchise travel agencies). Finally, this study provides recommendations to retail organizations in order to face up to the negative effects of a multi-channel distribution system on the sales agents.

Emergency procurement strategies have attracted significant attention from academicians and practitioners with the increase of supply disruptions in the past two decades. We study a manufacturer’s contingent sourcing strategies under supply disruption and competition using Stackelberg game. We investigate a two-stage supply chain consisting of two competing manufacturers and two suppliers, where the wholesale prices offered by the two suppliers are different. Supplier 1 is unreliable and cheap, while supplier 2 is reliable and expensive, and moreover, supplier 2 has capacity limits. Manufacturer A uses a dual-sourcing, manufacturer B uses a single-sourcing. According to two manufacturers’ order sequence, we established two manufacturers' expected profit function under three scenarios. We obtain the optimal order quantities and expected profits of the two manufacturers in different scenarios, and show that supply disruption and procurement time have effect on the manufacturer's purchasing decisions.

The sales environment is crucial to the ultimate success of a company, as it shapes and determines nearly all interactions with the firm’s customers. Having read this chapter, you should have a good understanding that sales organizations can be structured by its products, channels, regions and/or customers, and that—in the face of increasingly demanding customers and a highly competitive market-environment—it is more than ever necessary important, to put a stronger emphasis on a customer-oriented sales organization. You should also become familiar with the importance of managing the critical interfaces within the sales department and the interfaces with other functional areas. The latter includes both the sales-marketing interface and traditionally “sales-averse” functions such as product development, research and development, production, logistics, finance, and administration. Moreover, as selling has long been linked to “sleazy” activities, we like to offer advice that enables sales managers and sales reps to avoid unethical selling practices, but to build an ethical sales organization instead. You will therefore know what is needed to create and manage a positive, healthy, and efficient work climate. Finally, you will become familiar with the major steps for establishing a sales driven company.

Studying mathematics teachers in the Political invites to understand how teachers’ subjectivities emerge in the entanglement of the individual in discursive-material formations. We focus on the power effects of the expert discourses by international agencies such as OECD and UNESCO in the fabrication of the mathematics teacher’s subjectivity. Deploying a Foucault-inspired discourse analysis on a series of documents produced by these agencies, we argue that nowadays cultural thesis about who the mathematics teacher should be are framed in a double bind of the teacher as a policy product and as a sales agent. Narratives about the mathematics teacher are made possible within a dispositive of control, which makes mathematics education and mathematics teachers the cornerstone for realizing current market-oriented, competitive, and globalized societies.

Contract phone card is a kind of special product with follow-up service. For this particular product, we designed a revenue sharing contract for communication operator, based on a research of product pricing and ordering problem about communication operator and its sales agent. The contract will encourage the sales agent to improve the quantity of cards and achieve the purpose of increasing the number of users, by sharing a certain proportion of fixed subsequent earnings to the sales agent. Then, we used CVaR risk measurement tools to study pricing and ordering problem of sales agent in the revenue sharing contract. The results show that appropriate sharing factor could achieve the optimal coordination between communication operator and its tier-one agent, and maximize the benefit of the supply chain.

We consider a three-layer supply chain with a manufacturer, a reseller, and a sales agent. The demand is stochastically determined by the random market condition and the sales agent's private effort level. Although the manufacturer is uninformed about the market condition, the reseller and the sales agent conduct demand forecasting and generate private demand signals. Under this framework with two levels of adverse selection intertwined with moral hazard, we study the impact of the reseller's and the sales agent's forecasting accuracy on the profitability of each member. We show that the manufacturer's profitability is convex on the reseller's forecasting accuracy. From the manufacturer's perspective, typically improving the reseller's accuracy is detrimental when the accuracy is low but is beneficial when it is high. We identify the concrete interrelation among the manufacturer-optimal reseller's accuracy, the volatility of the market condition, and the sales agent's accuracy. Finally, the manufacturer's interest may be aligned with the reseller's when only the reseller can choose her accuracy; this alignment is never possible when both downstream players have the discretion to choose their accuracy. © 2014 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Naval Research Logistics 61: 207–222, 2014

This paper studies the impact of a manufacturer-hired sales agent on a supply chain comprising a manufacturer and a retailer. The sales agent is working mainly at the retailer's location to boost demand. We focus on a wholesale price contract, under which the retailer decides how much to order from the manufacturer. The information structure within the supply chain and the efficiency of the sales agent affect the supply chain members' expected profits. We show that, because of the agency issue between the sales agent and the manufacturer, when the retailer's demand forecast accuracy is similar to the manufacturer's and the wholesale price is fixed, the retailer's profit decreases as his demand forecast accuracy improves. We also illustrate that when the retailer's forecast accuracy is much better than the manufacturer's and the wholesale price is endogenous, his expected profit decreases as his forecast accuracy improves. Moreover, we demonstrate that having a more efficient sales agent is beneficial for the retailer when the wholesale price is fixed, whereas this is not always the case when the wholesale price depends on the efficiency of the sales agent.

Manufacturers of packaged consumer goods strive to develop a new product with a special feature that could provide additional value to consumers. However, it is less clear whether such an effort is still rewarding in terms of margin if manufacturers are losing power to retailers as some have argued. To investigate this issue, we conduct an economic analysis in the Japanese yogurt market incorporating strategic interaction between manufacturers and a retailer as well as between manufacturers by extending the framework employed in the earlier literature to suit the retailer Stackelberg game which can reflect the possible power shift from manufacturers to retailers. We find (1) the manufacturers' margins on special featured brands are larger than those on the others; (2) however, the manufacturer producing such brands is not able to leverage these brands to exert bargaining power over the retailer; and (3) the retailer obtains as large margins as the manufacturers on these brands. In the course of this research, we successfully portray the symmetrical relationship between manufacturer and retailer Stackelberg games, whereby the vertical Nash game is located in the midpoint of those two games.