What Counts as Sales Revenue in B-to-B Transactions? The Regulatory and Marketing Management Issues

Abstract

ABSTRACT The rules governing what qualifies as sales revenue are surprisingly complex. In fact, revenue recognition has become one of the hottest areas of investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission. Based upon a review of literature from the fields of accounting, finance, marketing and management, this article explains the common practices and motivators that trigger improper sales revenue recognition in B-to-B marketing transactions. A model of marketing actions and financial performance is developed that emphasizes the need for expanding firm performance criteria for formulating and implementing marketing strategy tactics, in an effort to control the improper revenue recognition practices. A classification scheme is also developed that broadly categorizes the motivators into four main groups, including those that are primarily triggered by (1) the firm's desire to obtain some favorable resource or response from an external third party, (2) some aspect of the firm's marketing strategy failure and (3) the employee's personal enrichment goals, and (4) the lack of knowledge of the GAAP guidelines. All four groups of the motivators result in misleading the firm's sales revenues, hence are fraudulent in nature. We provide guidelines for curbing the revenue recognition lapses through sales-force training, with an emphasis on ethical rules of conduct for corporate behavior, and the design of marketing strategy formulation and its implementation. We also identify several areas and directions for future research.