There exists heightened research attention afforded to the pivotal demands - both internal and external - that exist within the salesperson role set. Unprecedented pressures on salespersons to acquire, retain, and build enduring customer relationships to enhance the firm's bottom-line performance coincides with increasing complexities within the work environment. This relevant and timely research introduces an original construct derived from the long-standing attention afforded to relationship selling, relational incongruity that exists within the buyer-seller exchange. Relational incongruity, defined, is the relational tension spawned between the salesperson, the customer, and the firm when situational psychological incongruity exists within the buyer-seller exchange itself. Framed in resource-advantage theory, this research investigates divergent demands and the increasing complexity of sales relationships through the lens of relational incongruity. A research program based on minimizing relational incongruity will augment the sales management and B2B literature by looking at how he salesperson and the customer build strong relationships as well as the antecedents that can undermine these relationships by generating realtional incongruity.

Branding dates back to centuries ago when traders were trying to distinguish their products from others in order to promise a higher quality to their consumers. Today, brands are considered as intangible resources that can have a significant contribution to the firm performance. Based on the Resource-Based Theory (RBT), valuable, rare, inimitable, and non-substitutable brands are strategic resources that create superior value and play a key role in achieving a sustainable competitive advantage over rivals. In the process of developing and maintaining strong brands, brand managers constantly need to make multiple decisions. Whether to add, delete or retail brands are among the routine decisions that brand managers face in managing their brand portfolios. Brand managers need to regularly assess their brand portfolios in order to make sure they are not selling redundant brands. Through brand portfolio assessment, brand managers can recognize weak brands and delete the unprofitable brands from the portfolio in order to free up resources and reinvest them in their stronger and more successful brands to gain competitive advantage in the market. This admonition is in line with the RBT of competitive advantage. This dissertation builds upon and extends previous literature on RBT in the context of brand deletion to achieve three main objectives. The first objective is to find the answer to why companies decide to delete brands from their portfolios. Thus, the focus of the first objective is to identify the organizational (i.e., firm, managerial, and brand) factors that drive the brand deletion strategy in a company. The second goal is to find the answer to the when question through identifying the environmental (i.e., market) factors associated with brand deletion decision making in a company. Finally, the third objective is to go deeper and investigate the different types of brand deletion strategy (i.e., merge, sell, milk, and kill). In other words, the third objective seeks to find the answer to the how question. Deleting brands from the portfolio of a company, being the most sensitive issue in strategic brand portfolio management, is yet understudied in the brand portfolio management literature. This study adds to the literature of strategic brand portfolio management by a) applying the Resource-based Theory (RBT) in the context of brand deletion decision making and b) empirically testing the relationships among the drivers of brand deletion strategies. The findings of this dissertation provide a better understanding on how each of these factors are associated with the brand deletion decision making process in companies. The current dissertation provides practitioners with several managerial insights as well. First, the study identifies and empirically tests several organizational-level factors that drive brand deletion decisions in companies. This will help brand managers be familiar with factors that they need to consider when evaluating their poor-performing brands. Breaking these factors into internal (brand and firm) and external (market) drivers provides practitioners with a better understanding of the brand deletion decision making process. In addition, the findings of this study help managers realize their own role (in terms of their attitude toward deletion and their commitment to the brand) in the brand deletion process. Finally, the identification and discussion of the four types of brand deletion strategy help companies have a clearer picture of how they can remove brands from their portfolios.

In the pre-relationship exploration stage of a business-to-business (B2B) relationship, firms find it difficult to evaluate other parties because of the prevalence of information asymmetry. Firms must make informed decisions, otherwise, they end up in a contentious long-term relationship, which adversely affects the performance of both sides. While majority research on B2B relationships is focused in the post-relationship phase, very little has been done to identify strategies that firms can adopt to signal their firm characteristics in the pre-relationship phase. This is important, as such signals can help firms make informed purchase decisions by cutting through the information asymmetry. Also, sending the right signals can help firms extract a price premium from their prospective partners, contributing positively to their bottom line. Therefore, this dissertation consists of three essays with the objective to (i) identify positioning strategies that sellers can use to signal firm characteristics and test which elements of firm characteristics enable them to extract a price premium (ii) identify branding strategies that sellers can use to signal firm characteristics and test which elements of firm characteristics enable them to extract a price premium (iii) investigate signals that affect firm performance.

This dissertation research explores the factors that influence direct selling agents' sales performance and job satisfaction. In the direct selling channels, the agents not only sell the products to customers. They may concurrently perform a "distributor" role as a stand-alone entity composed of their own sales network. This dissertation research features two essays. The first essay investigates how direct selling agents' perceptions of control and sense of belonging relate to PO. This essay further explores how PO influences job performance and job satisfaction. Results suggest that perception of control and sense of belonging fuel PO. Furthermore, leader-member exchange mediates the relationship between PO and sales performance, as well as PO and job satisfaction in direct selling networks. The second essay introduces a new construct (relational incongruity) and discusses how complex sales environments and direct selling agents' organizational structures influence the relational incongruity in their organization and its ensuring effect on sales performance and job satisfaction. The results indicate that organizational complexity is positively related to relational incongruity. However, customer complexity has a negative impact on relational incongruity. Relational incongruity in direct selling agents' organizations has negative effects on job satisfaction but has no effects on sales performance. Epistemic curiosity undermines the negative effect of relational incongruity on job satisfaction but negatively influences independent distributors' sales performance.

Linguistic racism is faced by non-native customers due to their different language style when they go through the service exchange process. Despite its prevalence and importance, there is a dearth of research about linguistic racism in the marketing literature, especially from consumers' perspectives. This dissertation thus aims to address this gap by focusing on consumers' cognitive and affective responses as a result to their linguistic racism experiences when they interact with service employees (native speakers) from the host country. Toward this goal, first (Essay 1), a qualitative study is performed to anchor the dissertation in the customers' real-life experiences and to help identify key associated themes which are further empirically examined (Essay 2 & 3) in this three-essay format dissertation. Essay 2 empirically investigates if the identity assignment through ones' language style makes customers feel stigmatized and influence their psychological well-being. In addition, how these experiences subsequently influence their inclination to use technology-mediated interfaces. Similarly, the main objective of Essay 3 was to employ a sociological perspective to examine the impact of language-based chronic social exclusion on non-native customers' psychological and behavioral responses in the marketplace. Moreover, their intention to pay higher tip as a refocusing strategy when these customers experience language-based chronic social exclusion. Together these three essays extend our understanding of how language varieties and the associated stigma influence non-native customer's affective and cognitive responses and shape their consumer buying behavior.

The traditional definition of tourism has been transformed by significant advancements in communication and information technology. The concept of Metaverse, derived from the words "meta" (meaning beyond) and "verse" (meaning universe), has redefined how people experience travel. This innovative concept combines virtual reality, augmented reality, and artificial intelligence to create virtually augmented spaces. However, the tourism industry should clarify and narrow down the definition of Metaverse and its intriguing concept for its successful adoption in the future. Thus, it is crucial to define Metaverse tourism and understand how users will accept it in the near future. This study aims to comprehend the technology behind Metaverse tourism, review current research on the topic, and identify the critical factors related to experiential Metaverse tourism. The paper also examines how computer self-efficacy, novelty seeking, subjective norm, job relevance, perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use, and perceived enjoyment can influence expected user satisfaction and behavioral intention, given the context of situational motivation. The findings have significant implications for theory and management, addressing various questions related to users' perceptions, expectations, design considerations, stakeholder preparations, and performance assessment of metaverse technology in tourism applications.

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