As vendas de uma empresa são determinadas pelo resultado da gestão das variáveis de marketing (produto, preço, distribuição, comunicação e força de vendas) e também pela sua capacidade de reação às oscilações das variáveis incontroláveis do ambiente e às ações da concorrência. Para empresas no setor industrial, venda pessoal tem grande importância em função da necessidade dos clientes no desenvolvimento de relacionamentos. Por isso, venda pessoal em marketing industrial torna-se uma quinta variável de marketing. Existem diferentes propostas para o planejamento desta função, muitas vezes de forma não integrada. Por outro lado, o setor de insumos agropecuários possui particularidades que abrem oportunidade de tornar o planejamento de vendas mais completo. O objetivo central é a proposição de etapas para o planejamento e gestão de vendas que consolide a literatura de planos de força de vendas, com contribuições da Nova Economia Institucional, e que contemple as particularidades deste setor. As organizações de vendas de três empresas foram acompanhada com a intenção de identificar estas particularidades e os desafios identificados foram contrastados aos modelos existentes. Propõe-se uma seqüência com 10 etapas: (1) análise de necessidades do comprador e compreensão do papel de vendas na transação (2) análise ambiental e concorrência, (3) definição de quotas (4) organização de vendas: desenho de territórios, especialização e número de vendedores, (5) modo de governança e remuneração, (6) administração de clientes e informações, (7) recrutamento e seleção, (8) treinamento e motivação, (9) administração de conflitos e (10) formas de controle e auditoria / The sales of a company are determined by the management of the controllable marketing variables (product, price, place, and promotion) and by the ability of the firm of reacting to the uncontrollable marketing variables oscillations and competitor’s actions. Mainly for firms in business-to-business, personal selling has great importance due to the needs costumers have for business relationships. Therefore, in industrial marketing personal selling becomes clearly a fifth marketing variable. The sales literature presents several proposals for sales planning and management, covering different aspects and, very frequently, lacking integration. On the other side, the agricultural input industry has particularities making incomplete or superficial the existing sales planning models. This research aims at proposing a framework for sales planning and management considering the agricultural input industry, and integrating sales research advances and contributions from New Institution Economics. The sales organization of three firms were followed and documented and their critical aspects on sales were contrasted to the existing sales literature and sales management models. It is proposed a sequence with 10 steps: (1) client needs analysis and understanding of the role of sales in marketing;(2) environmental and competitor analysis (3) quota definition (4) sales organization: territory alignment, specialization, and sales force size (5) governance structure and compensation (6) clients management and information (7) recruiting and selection (8)training and motivation (9) conflict management (10) control measures and sales audit.

As vendas de uma empresa são determinadas pelo resultado da gestão das variáveis de marketing (produto, preço, distribuição, comunicação e força de vendas) e também pela sua capacidade de reação às oscilações das variáveis incontroláveis do ambiente e às ações da concorrência. Para empresas no setor industrial, venda pessoal tem grande importância em função da necessidade dos clientes no desenvolvimento de relacionamentos. Por isso, venda pessoal em marketing industrial torna-se uma quinta variável de marketing. Existem diferentes propostas para o planejamento desta função, muitas vezes de forma não integrada. Por outro lado, o setor de insumos agropecuários possui particularidades que abrem oportunidade de tornar o planejamento de vendas mais completo. O objetivo central é a proposição de etapas para o planejamento e gestão de vendas que consolide a literatura de planos de força de vendas, com contribuições da Nova Economia Institucional, e que contemple as particularidades deste setor. As organizações de vendas de três empresas foram acompanhada com a intenção de identificar estas particularidades e os desafios identificados foram contrastados aos modelos existentes. Propõe-se uma seqüência com 10 etapas: (1) análise de necessidades do comprador e compreensão do papel de vendas na transação (2) análise ambiental e concorrência, (3) definição de quotas (4) organização de vendas: desenho de territórios, especialização e número de vendedores, (5) modo de governança e remuneração, (6) administração de clientes e informações, (7) recrutamento e seleção, (8) treinamento e motivação, (9) administração de conflitos e (10) formas de controle e auditoria / The sales of a company are determined by the management of the controllable marketing variables (product, price, place, and promotion) and by the ability of the firm of reacting to the uncontrollable marketing variables oscillations and competitor’s actions. Mainly for firms in business-to-business, personal selling has great importance due to the needs costumers have for business relationships. Therefore, in industrial marketing personal selling becomes clearly a fifth marketing variable. The sales literature presents several proposals for sales planning and management, covering different aspects and, very frequently, lacking integration. On the other side, the agricultural input industry has particularities making incomplete or superficial the existing sales planning models. This research aims at proposing a framework for sales planning and management considering the agricultural input industry, and integrating sales research advances and contributions from New Institution Economics. The sales organization of three firms were followed and documented and their critical aspects on sales were contrasted to the existing sales literature and sales management models. It is proposed a sequence with 10 steps: (1) client needs analysis and understanding of the role of sales in marketing;(2) environmental and competitor analysis (3) quota definition (4) sales organization: territory alignment, specialization, and sales force size (5) governance structure and compensation (6) clients management and information (7) recruiting and selection (8)training and motivation (9) conflict management (10) control measures and sales audit.

This dissertation studies agricultural input intensification, defined as the increased use of modern inputs such as hybrid seeds, mineral fertilizer, herbicide, and pesticide in African agriculture. It also analyses the potential of this intensification to accelerate productivity growth and tests the effectiveness of two policies, input subsidies and land reforms, in promoting it and consequently in increasing crop yield. In the first essay, we argue that to create the conditions for the emergence of a green revolution in Africa, modern agricultural technologies have to be adopted as a package, not in a piecemeal fashion. This argument is consistent with a conceptual framework that we develop to illustrate the importance of harnessing strategic complementarities among agricultural technologies by adopting them simultaneously rather than sequentially. Based on this framework, we propose a methodology to estimate an index to measure agricultural input intensification in its many dimensions. The index provides a simple and intuitive measure to quantify joint adoption of several inputs and compare it across plots, crops, farmers, and regions. Applying this methodology to maize producers in Burkina Faso and Tanzania, we show that our estimated index is a valid measure of joint input adoption and effectively captures the relative importance of each input as well as the number of different inputs adopted. Using the estimated index, we find that simultaneous adoption of modern inputs in Burkina Faso and Tanzania is limited but not rare. Most importantly, we find that the impact of the adoption of individual modern input on yield is increasing with the level of intensification for others. In the subsequent two essays, we assess the effectiveness of government’s direct intervention through input subsidies and indirect intervention through land reforms in promoting agricultural input intensification and increasing productivity. Our empirical analyses focus on Burkina Faso, a country that has recently implemented a fertilizer subsidy program and is undertaking profound land reforms to improve land tenure security and land transferability among households. The second essay tests the hypothesis that subsidizing only one input might promote or discourage the use of other inputs. We find that fertilizer subsidy for maize farmers in Burkina Faso crowds in the use of hybrid seeds and crop protection chemicals, but discourages the use of manure. The last essay assesses whether the development of rural land rental markets can facilitate land transferability among farmers and increase input intensification and productivity. The findings suggest that land rental transfers land from less talented or committed farmers to the more able but have minimal impact on input intensification. However, our results show that land renters are more productive and better farm managers. These results suggest that the short-term gains from policies that foster the development of land rental markets in Burkina Faso, and more generally Africa, will likely be in term of efficiency rather than widespread adoption of modern agricultural technologies.

Agricultural input expenditures have not been widely incorporated in most partial equilibrium models. Thus, investigating the effect of economic policies and other exogenous factors on the agricultural sector will produce only a partial analysis, since the simultaneous impact of these factors on input expenditures is excluded. This study, therefore, extends the existing partial equilibrium multi-market model of the South African agricultural sector (BFAP model) by incorporating agricultural input expenditure. Thus, the analysis of the impact of economic policies on the agricultural sector, which was limited only on the gross income (production, area planted and prices), has now been extended to assess their effects on input expenditures, gross value added and net farming income of the sector. In addition, the analysis is further extended to evaluate the financial and economic position of the agricultural sector by investigating the implications of the policies on the asset and debt values of the sector. The comparative result obtained from the shocks of a crude oil and world fertiliser price rise shows that due to the inclusion of the recursive effect from the output to input side of the sector and vice versa and endogenising input costs, the effect of the shock on gross value added and net farming income converges slowly and cyclically in the recursively linked model, compared to the unlinked model, in which the effect abruptly halts after a single year. Thus, the recursively linked integrated model replicates the dynamics experienced by the agricultural sector better than the recursively unlinked integrated model. In addition, the endogenisation of domestic input costs on the integrated model allows a comprehensive analysis of the effect of macroeconomic variables on the agricultural sector by considering their impact on both outputs and inputs. Thus, using the recursively linked model, a fifty percent devaluation of exchange rate is assessed. The result showed that a depreciation of exchange rate resulted in a net benefit for the sector, as the gain from enhancing agricultural income outweighs the rise in expenditure. Excluding the simultaneous impact on input expenditure would have overestimated the benefit by looking only at its effect on gross income. The integrated model was also used to project a baseline for the South African agricultural sector’s main aggregate variables for the medium term (2010-2015) under the status quo of policy assumptions and forecast values of exogenous variables. The baseline projections of the gross income, intermediate input expenditure and gross value added show a modest average annual growth rate during the baseline period. The net farming income, however, depicts a relatively lower growth due to the general modest rise in agricultural gross income compared with total input expenditure. Based on the projected values of main aggregate variables, several financial and economic performance indicators for the agricultural sector are also projected. In general, the economic performance indicators of the sector, measured by the net return on the sector’s investment and equity, show good performance when compared with the average cost of borrowing during the baseline period. Thus, this study shows that integrating input expenditure in a multi-market output model by recursively linking both sides and endogenising domestic input costs would improve the result of the standard partial equilibrium by generating projections for several key aggregate variables, providing the net effect of economic policies on the agricultural sector and replicating the dynamics of the agricultural sector better than models that have few/no input components or that assess the effects separately and ignore the recursive linkage. Thus, this study provides a powerful modelling tool to be used by policy makers to comprehensively investigate the net effects of economic policies on the agricultural sector and to answer several ‘what if’ questions. / Thesis (DCom)--University of Pretoria, 2010. / Agricultural Economics, Extension and Rural Development / unrestricted