Sales Agents Research Articles

Occupation and relative risk of cutaneous squamous cell carcinoma (cSCC): A 45-year follow-up study in 4 Nordic countries

The age-adjusted incidence of cutaneous squamous cell carcinoma (cSCC) in the Nordic countries has increased during the last 60years, and the identification of occupational variation in the relative risk of cSCC may have preventive implications. We sought to describe variation in the relative risk of cSCC between occupational categories in Finland, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden. This is a historical prospective cohort study based on record linkages between census data for 12.9 million people and cancer registry data from 1961 to 2005. Standardized incidence ratios for cSCC were estimated for 53 occupational categories with the cSCC incidence rates for the national population of each country used as reference. During follow-up, 87,619 incident cases of cSCC were reported to the national cancer registries. In all countries combined, significant increased standardized incidence ratios were observed among seamen, military personnel, public safety workers, technical workers, teachers, transport workers, physicians, dentists, nurses, other health workers, religious workers, clerical workers, administrators, and sale agents (standardized incidence ratios between 1.08 and 1.77). Information on occupation was based on 1 point in time only. The occupational variation of the relative risk of cSCC might be associated with socioeconomic factors, and to some extent to occupational exposures.

Study on marketing channel and value chain analysis of some commercially important marine fish species available in Cox’s bazar area, Bangladesh

A study was conducted to investigate marketing channel and value chain analysis of some commercially important marine fish species available in Cox’s Bazar area, Bangladesh. Three commercially important marine fish species were investigated in respect to their marketing channel and value analysis: 1) Pomfret, Stromateus chinensis, 2) Jewfish, Otolithoides argenteus and 3) Hilsha, Tenualosa ilisha. Three marketing channels mainly encompasses from fishermen to consumers, namely the primary, secondary and retail markets involving sales agents, suppliers, wholesalers, commission agents, processors and retailers. A total of 120 fishermen and intermediaries involved in the channels were interviewed. A large number of intermediaries were found to be involved in the marketing channel and this group is believed to make huge profit, thus the prices of fishes were very high in the final consumer market. Marketing margin and profit also analyzed. Marketing margin for Pomfret fish, Jewfish and Hilsha were 21%, 27% and 27% of consumer purchase price, respectively. Poor road and transport facilities and large number of intermediaries in the chain were some of the major problems of marine fish marketing chain. It was therefore necessary to provide organizational support, government support, extension service and training facilities to the market operators for sustainable fish marketing systems.Res. Agric., Livest. Fish.3(1): 195-201, April 2016

A Discourse Study of Insurance Sales Agent-Client Interactions in China’s Rural Areas—From the Perspective of Topic Management

<p>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 the perspective of topic management. The analysis of the interactions aims to understand the interactants’ roles in midst of social change. The relationship between sales agents and clients is ambiguous and conflicting. By identifying three types of talk, namely, friendship talk, institutional talk and task-oriented talk, we find both parties are consciously or unconsciously initiating, maintaining and managing different topics to their respective advantages strategically. Through the analysis, we hope 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.</p>

Hidden Persuaders: Do Small Gifts Lubricate Business Negotiations?

Gift-giving customs are ubiquitous in social, political, and business life. Legal regulation and industry guidelines for gifts are often based on the assumption that large gifts have the potential to influence behavior and create conflicts of interest, but small gifts do not. However, scientific evidence on the impact of small gifts on business relationships is scarce. We conducted a controlled field experiment in collaboration with sales agents of a multinational consumer products company to study the influence of small gifts on the outcome of business negotiations. We find that small gifts matter. On average, sales representatives generate more than twice as much revenue when they distribute a small gift at the onset of their negotiations. However, we also find that small gifts tend to be counterproductive when purchasing and sales agents meet for the first time, underlining that the nature of the business relationship crucially affects the profitability of gifts.

The effect of virtual sales agent (VSA) gender – product gender congruence on product advice credibility, trust in VSA and online vendor, and purchase intention

Online vendors are increasingly using virtual sales assistants (VSA), either in the form of an animated picture or a photograph of a real person, to help customers with their product-related information needs. Currently, what is known is that the use of a VSA in an online web shop results in positive outcomes such as trust and purchase intention. What remains unknown, however, is whether or not VSA gender-product gender congruence has a positive effect on customers' attitude towards the product-related advice, the VSA, and the online vendor and on customers' online purchase intention.To determine the hypothesized effect of VSA gender-product gender on variables such as trust and purchase intention, a 2 (VSA gender: male vs female)–×–3 (product gender: male, female, and neutral) experiment with 183 inhabitants (between the age of 18 and 30) of the Netherlands was implemented. Results of the multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) reveal that congruence between VSA gender and product gender (e.g. female VSA providing advice about a feminine product) positively influences customers' belief in the credibility of the product-related advice, their trust in the VSA and the online vendor, and their purchase intention. The separate main effects of VSA gender and product gender on the aforementioned dependent variables, however, are not statistically significant. Furthermore, customers' gender did not serve any moderating function in the relationship between VSA gender-product gender congruence and the dependent variables.

Selling Strategy Selection Considering Both the Way of Payment and Inventory Limitation

In view of the facts that firms can sell their products on either cash or credit, and they may either meet all buyers' demand or only parts of that by setting an inventory limitation, four selling strategies are investigated in this paper: (i) cash sale without inventory limitation, (ii) cash sale with inventory limitation, (iii) credit sale without inventory limitation, and (iv) credit sale with inventory limitation. By comparing these four strategies, a number of interesting observations can be drawn. First, as to the election of the way of payment, it reveals that credit sale always dominates cash sale as long as the inventory level settings are the same. In particular, and contrary to our intuition, it shows that under the case of credit sale with inventory limitation, the firm may sometimes choose not to serve the low-quality buyers even though it's profitable, and choose to serve them under some other circumstances although it would incur a loss, which are mainly due to the incentive effects by doing so. Second, with regard to the selection of the setting of the inventory level, it demonstrates that if the products are sold on cash, not setting inventory limitation will always bring more profits for the firm than setting one; whereas if the products are sold on credit, instead, setting inventory limitation may outperform not setting one under certain conditions, depending critically on the relationship between the expected profit from selling to the low-quality buyers and the salvage value of the unsold products. Third, when taking both the way of payment and inventory level setting into consideration, it turns out that cash sale with inventory limitation should be used only as a last resort. Nevertheless, the relationship between cash sale without inventory limitation and credit sale with inventory limitation is uncertain, mainly because the inventory limitation and the way of payment are inextricably linked in the presence of moral hazard of the sales agent. In the end, the other two types of compensation contracts --- backed-receivables and reward-penalty pooling contracts --- are also examined. And we find that the optimal selling strategy remains unchanged, which verifies the robustness of the insights.

Individual, Network, Assemblage: Creating Connections on the Global Film Festival Circuit

What role do individuals play in sustaining the so-called global film festival network? This article considers this question through case studies of four specialist Chinese-language film festivals in London. It argues that while the global circuit shapes the institutional appearance of these smaller events, the kinds of strategic collaborations that the organisers of the latter effect at the former – striking up connections with directors and sales agents at film markets, for example – are key ways in which global relationships and A-list events are built from the ground up. These mutually related but unstable interactions allow us to rethink the network as an assemblage of events and individuals, addressing the analytical problem of scale in film festivals studies in the process.

Hidden Persuaders: Do Small Gifts Lubricate Business Negotiations?

Gift-giving customs are ubiquitous in social, political, and business life. Legal regulation and industry guidelines for gifts are often based on the assumption that large gifts have the potential to influence behavior and create conflicts of interest, but small gifts do not. However, scientific evidence on the impact of small gifts on business relationships is scarce. We conducted a controlled field experiment in collaboration with sales agents of a multinational consumer products company to study the influence of small gifts on the outcome of business negotiations. We find that small gifts matter. On average, sales representatives generate more than twice as much revenue when they distribute a small gift at the onset of their negotiations. However, we also find that small gifts tend to be counterproductive when purchasing and sales agents meet for the first time, underlining that the nature of the business relationship crucially affects the profitability of gifts.

The use of e-business in Serbian travel agencies: Development of the EBusTour model

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).

Understanding Cotton Growers’ Information Needs from Rural Bahawalpur

This study investigated the information needs of cotton growers residing in two villages in the district of Bahawalpur. Face-to-face interviews were conducted by visiting farms or homes using a semi-structured interview schedule. Data were analyzed by applying descriptive statistics. The results indicated that cotton growers required information, in general, in the areas of soil management and plot preparation, cotton seeds, crop care, and pre- and post- harvesting activities. Moreover, these farmers relied very much upon informal networks (progressive farmers, sales agents, and pesticides dealers) while looking for the needed information. Lack of timely access, illiteracy, infrequent visits of extension staff, and language barrier were the major problems that these farmers faced while getting needed information. The results of this research indicated the need for an integrated agricultural information delivery system for farmers. This research has made a significant contribution in cotton growers' information behavior research.

Price delegation and salesforce contract design with asymmetric risk aversion coefficient of sales agents

An important issue that has attracted the interest of academics and practitioners in both marketing and operations is, should pricing decisions be made by the firm or delegated to the salesforce? This problem has been addressed in the research literature based on the assumption that the exact risk aversion coefficients of the sales agents are known to the firm, which may not be true in most applications. In this paper, we study this problem but assuming that the risk aversion coefficients of agents are private information of the sales agents. For both centralized pricing and delegated pricing settings, the optimal compensation and pricing contracts are designed and the sensitivity analyses are conducted. An interesting finding is that the risk aversion and effort valuation have substitutable impacts on the pricing policy preference of the firm and the agents. Either strong risk aversion or high effort valuation can drive the firm and the agents to favor centralized pricing over delegated pricing.

Explaining job satisfaction and intentions to quit from a value-risk perspective

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to investigate the effect of risk aversion (RA) on expected income and job satisfaction (JS) with pay in the case of sales agents under a compensation system based on pay-for-performance.Design/methodology/approachData were collected from 125 sales agents of an outbound call center via questionnaires and controlled experiments. Seemingly unrelated equations using maximum likelihood estimation was employed to estimate the proposed model and test relationships.FindingsFindings show that income expectations (IE) respond to a model of trade-off between value and risk. The sales agents trade off their expected value of performance (i.e. expected income) with RA. Additionally, IE and actual performance of the salesperson have influence on JS with pay with opposite signs.Research limitations/implicationsThe results of this research may need to be modified to consider jobs with compensation systems with a higher proportion of fixed component of the wage than the variable component. Also, a broader concept of JS and not just related to the pay, should be considered.Practical implicationsGiven the importance of RA in the attitudes of employees in relation to their expectations, the authors believe that it should be necessary and useful to incorporate measures of RA in the process of selection and recruitment for these jobs.Originality/valueThis paper assessed an important element as the RA at the micro level inside of an organization. This element could be very important for job environments with high uncertainty in income that could influence JS via employee expectations.

Micro Powders appoints McCullough as sales agent in Southwest

Micro Powders appoints McCullough as sales agent in Southwest

Turnover Prediction in a Call Center: Behavioral Evidence of Loss Aversion using Random Forest and Naïve Bayes Algorithms

It is well known that call centers suffer from high levels of employee turnover; however, call centers are services that have excellent operational records of telemarketing activities performed by each employee. With this information, we propose to use the Random Forest and the naïve Bayes algorithms to build classifiers and predict turnover of the sales agents. The results of 2407 sales agents’ operational performance records showed that, although the naïve Bayes is much simpler than Random Forest, both classifiers performed similarly, achieving interesting accuracy rates in turnover prediction. Moreover, evidence was found that incorporating performance differences over time increases significantly the accuracy of the predictive models up to 85%, with the naïve Bayes being quite competitive with the Random Forest classifier when the amount of information is increased. The results obtained in this study could be useful for management decision-making to monitor and identify potential turnover due to poor performance, and therefore, to take a preventive action.

Aproximación a la distribución internacional de cine español en los inicios del siglo XXI

Abstract The internationalization of Spanish cinema has come to form part of the public and private policies of the film industry in this new century. The presence of Spanish cinema in international festivals and markets, as well as the recognition some of its directors and stars enjoy, make it possible to create a map of the organization of Spanish and European promotional politics as well as of the elements that can be connected to their brands within the industry. The rise of sales agents in this context speaks to the privatization of this space in which certain elements are formulated to make Spanish cinema visible. Its characterization as a national cinema should be redefined in a context of globalization.

To Go or Not to Go for the Sell

Selling products and services is a central function in organizations. Although explaining sales success has mainly been approached from broad trait perspectives, tactical decision-making potentially explains additional variance in this crucial outcome. We propose and find that promotion focus positively predicts sales agents’ success, while prevention focus negatively predicts sales success. These relations were significant while controlling for five-factor traits. Predictors were measured before participants started on the job; outcome was the total number of sales participants made. As such, results evidence incremental validity of regulatory focus in predicting objective sales performance.

A modified lead-user approach for new product development: an illustration from the US of a marketing research tool for the forest industry

Innovation is critical for firm success, including forest sector firms. However, historically forest sector firms have focused on process over product innovations. Additionally, research shows that forest sector firms often fail to have a structured new product development (NPD) process. The purpose of this work is to illustrate use of the lead-user method to identify user-lead ideas for innovation within the wood-window value chain, thereby demonstrating the potential of a modified lead-user approach as a NPD tool for the forest industry. Personal interviews with 22 individuals were conducted with sales agents, installation experts, homebuilders, and architects. Findings outline opportunities for the introduction of new products/services, thereby demonstrating the value of relying on lead-users for identifying potential products. This study also highlights the challenges associated with the lead-user methodology, including the varying definitions of a lead-user and the subjective nature of categorising someone as a lead-user.

Is ICT good for employees? An analysis of its effects on sales agents’ perceptions of service cannibalization

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.

The Politics of Foreign Investment in Australian Housing: Chinese Investors, Translocal Sales Agents and Local Resistance

This article analyses the cultural, housing and intergovernmental politics of individual foreign investment in Australian real estate. The first section provides a brief history of Australia's housing system and shows the historical trend toward housing affordability ‘problems’ in Sydney and Melbourne. This review interrogates the claim Chinese investors compounded Australia's housing affordability problem after the global financial crisis. The second more substantive section draws on interview, real estate website and media data to demonstrate how the Australian housing system and Chinese and Australian actors enabled Chinese investment in Australian real estate. The third section demonstrates how a minority of Australian residents and some journalists are contesting Chinese foreign investment in Australian real estate. This study shows how contemporary global real estate relations complicate the politics of Asian real estate investment in Anglo-sphere countries.

Catch and Release

Catch and Release