Every day, salespeople span boundaries, coordinate internal and external expertise, leverage social capital, mobilize the tangible and intangible resources of their firm, and try to create value for all stakeholders. Recognizing the important roles of salespeople, Evans et al. (2012) and Lassk et al. (2012) call for more research on the usage of skills, knowledge, people, strategies, expertise, and other resources of salespeople to produce the desired outcomes. Responding to their calls, this study specifically focuses on how salespeople utilize their available and finite resources across four types of customers (new customers, short term customers, long term customers, and win-back customers) to identify and qualify new sales opportunities during the prospecting stage. The dissertation focuses on seven types of resources (capturing both internal and firm related resources) available for salespeople: (1) firm tangible, (2) firm intangible, (3) firm market based, (4) present resources, (5) skills, (6) knowledge, and (7) accumulated successes. The study further explores the moderating roles of organizational identification, competitive intensity, and customer dependence on the relationship between resources utilized and performance during the prospecting stage. The resource utilization scale is developed and tested for robustness. Next, using a final dataset of 346 responses from salespeople, the results reveal that salespeople adaptively utilized various resources across new customers, short-term customers, long-term customers, and win-back (lost) customers. Overall, performance during prospecting stage are more strongly influenced by utilization of internal resources (presence, knowledge, skills and success) than firm related factors. Further, successful prospecting performance requires the usage of skills and knowledge resources with new customers, only skills resources with short-term and long-term customers, but present resources, knowledge, and firm tangible resources with win-back customers. In addition, organizational identification and competitive intensity moderate the relationship between resource utilization and prospecting performance for all customer types, whereas customer dependence is an important moderator for long-term customers. The paper makes several contributions to key areas such as resource allocations in the context of personal selling, and how firms can strategically enhance the performance of their salespeople. Theoretically, the study develops resource utilization scale, and empirically tests its effects on prospecting performance. From a managerial stand point, this dissertation offers additional insights into the effectiveness of each type of resources to plan for selective development of resources, as well as focused sales training.

International sales contract - Summary The topic of this thesis is an international sales contract. The aim of this thesis was to outline various ways of regulation of international sales contracts. Particular attention was paid to the United Nations Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods and the emerging European legislation Common European Sales Law. The thesis is divided into three main parts. The first part provides insight into the history of the concept of contracts of sale and the definition of this term in Roman law. Following is a brief description of modern regulations on sales contracts. Also an international element is defined in the international sales contracts and basic elements of choice of law rules are discussed in the next section. The last section of this part is devoted to individual regulations regarding international sales contracts. These regulations are divided according to their origins into national regulations, international regulations, norms and rules of European law and the rules of international business transactions - lex mercatoria. The second part of this thesis deals exclusively with the United Nations Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods, which is the most successful international treaty in the area of international sale of...

The topic of this thesis is a comparison of current legal regulation of property sale and its future modification, according to the wording of the new Civil Code. In the individual chapters are respectively described the most crucial aspects of this area in a perspective of current Civil code and the wording of the proposal, including evaluation of potential impacts of the changes to law practice. At the beginning of this work are definitions of main terms of property law, especially definition of the property itself, as it is being subject to quite essential changes in the new Civil Code. Single chapter deals with the rule "superficies solo cedit," which is intended to be renewed. Apart from the short summary of origin and development of this principle, this passage focuses primarily on the reasons, which led our legislatives to abandon this rule in 1950's and subsequently identifies reasons for its present reinstallation. There is description of the process of property sale in the following chapters. It consists of two separate parts, a property law and obligation law aspects. The key issue of the property law part is the role of the Land registry. The ownership of the transferee must be registered there in order to successfully complete the transfer. The new regulation brings several changes in...

The food provision system of today has been argued to be unsustainable with large scale production, price-pressure and outbreaks of diseases. Many consumers in the EU and Sweden are reacting to these issues and are becoming increasingly interested in finding local food alternatives that they consider to be safer and of higher quality. However, the small local food producers due to scarce budgets and marketing skills have problems in reaching this target market. Partly due to this, there has been an emergence of Alternative Food Networks (AFN) within which producers come together to get assistance in marketing and sales. Social media has emerged as a phenomenon that is argued by marketing scholars to be a highly useful tool to spread information in a cost-efficient way. Therefore, this study seek to answer the explorative question: “How do Alternative Food Networks use social media in order to help small local food producers reach the market?” The main purpose of the thesis is to explore and develop an understanding of how the emerging AFNs use social media to promote small local agricultural producers and help them in reaching the market. This will be done by investigating AFNs as Small-Medium Enterprise (SME) marketing networks, and how these operate in terms of the theoretical areas external marketing communication, coordination of the SME marketing network, segmentation practices and sales promotion. The theoretical contribution is to see how AFNs work in terms of these areas, and the practical implications will be to give advice on how AFNs should use social media to improve these areas. The study is done in an exploratory manner, and the data collection has been performed in accordance with qualitative research. This has been done through seven semi-structured interviews with respondents from six different AFNs in Sweden that are active on social media. The conclusions of this study shows that AFNs value the use of social media, however they utilize this tool to a varied degree. The AFNs use it to inform and to interact with their customers. Social media does not seem to be very actively incorporated into network communication or monitoring. The AFNs have many ideas about who their customer groups are, and in some cases these have been identified specifically on social media, which has been used to some extent for targeted advertising. The AFNs position themselves as a “good” food alternative. In sales promotion the AFNs mainly promote their events on social media, and have also promoted discounts to some extent. The study provides new theoretical knowledge in the area of marketing through social media by SMEs like AFNs. Practical implications for the AFNs are discussed, which mainly involve increasing the time spent on social media as a mainly free and powerful marketing tool.

A thesis submitted to the Faculty of Commerce Law and Management, University of Witwatersrand Business School, Johannesburg, in fulfilment of the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy Johannesburg, 2015 / Arguably the most important function a business focuses on is revenue generation, which is ultimately achieved through immediate sales and the inculcation of future customer spend. For many businesses, notably in the business-to-business realm, salespeople are still required to form relationships with key customer buyers and to achieve or facilitate sales through this “dyadic” interpersonal relationship. Understanding what makes relationships and interactions between customer buyers and salespeople successful – from a sales perspective – remains an important concern for organisations and marketing theorists. In such sales relationships, the “success” of the sale and the longer term sales relationship can depend on aspects of the interpersonal relationships such as the ability of the parties to communicate well, come to agreement, and potentially even bond socially. The ability of parties to form productive and conducive interpersonal relationships in turn depends on factors such as personality and culture. This thesis argues that there is no particular “best” personality or culture for the formation of successful sales relationships, but that match between the personality traits of salespeople and customers as well as between their respective organisation’s cultures may facilitate success in sales. As indicated above, the thesis studies two main dependent variables, namely sales success and word-of-mouth. These variables are derived from the theory of customer equity management (Rust, Lemon, & Narayandas, 2005). The thesis argues that prior to generating income through either a sale or through word-of-mouth the organisation will need to have a relationship with the customer. Relationship marketing (Morgan & Hunt, 1994) provides a framework for understanding what constitutes a relationship. The current study aligns itself with prior literature arguing that relationship quality comprises three components specifically; trust, satisfaction and commitment. Personality research has remained at the heart of industrial research and managerial practise. Voluminous literature has used the Big Five personality traits for understanding customer’s interactions. The five personality traits include Extraversion, Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, Neuroticism and Openness to Experience (Soto & John, 2012). The current study argues that it is not the personality traits themselves which are important, but rather the similarities or differences between the customer and the salesperson. Organisation culture has been shown to affect several different arenas within the management field, but has not been much examined within the context of dyadic relationships. The specific relationship that the study addresses is the customer-salesperson relationship. In this thesis I argue that both the customer and salesperson to some extent embody and reflect their respective organisational cultures, and in addition, sales systems can reflect organizational cultures, for instance where bureaucratic organizational culture creates sales systems with high levels of formality. In turn, match or mismatch in organizational cultures may affect sales or relationship outcomes in various ways. The well-known organisational culture index (Wallach, 1983) will be used to capture the cultures from both the salesperson and customer. The three elements of organisational culture measured by the index include bureaucratic cultural aspects, innovative cultural aspects, and supportive cultural aspects. To test these relationships, the thesis presents an empirical study based on a cross-sectional, quantitative, survey of the SME market in South Africa. One hundred salesperson-customer dyads participated in the study, and data from each member of the dyad was surveyed separately. Statistical techniques such as partial least squares structural equation modelling and polynomial regression were used in the analysis of the data. A response surface methodology allowed for graphical representation of the polynomial regression results. These results then acted as inputs for a Bayesian Networks analysis (Charniak, 1991), which are used to improve the understanding of causality. Results of the empirical survey indicate that trust, satisfaction and commitment affect the level of word-of-mouth while only trust and commitment have an effect on sales. The analysis indicates that matches or mismatches in the personality traits of extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, neuroticism and openness do affect dependent variables of relationship quality, sales success and word-of-mouth, and do so in differing ways. This thesis provides several unique contributions to sales theory and literature. First, although the salesperson-customer dyad has been studied before, the differences in personality traits have not been included. This is particularly true within the South African context. Secondly, organisational culture literature has been reviewed and studied but has neglected the role that organisational culture plays in the sales environment, specifically when interacting with a customer. Third, several theories are used to explain why the constructs came together; however certain aspects of these theories are questioned. Lastly, several practical applications are provided that allow organisations to improve the hiring process and implement training objectives for their sales force. Key Words: Dyad, satisfaction, trust, commitment, customer lifetime value, relationship marketing, relationship quality, organisational culture, bureaucracy, innovation, supportive, response surface, polynomial regression, Bayesian network, customer equity management. / MB2016

Thesis advisor: Hideo Konishi / This dissertation covers three essays in modelling the market competitions with the presence of consumer search. The first two essays add on Wolinsky's (1986) model to investigate firms' optimal choice of their way of doing business in response to the changing consumer search behaviors during the information age. The third essay modifies the Varian's (1980) model to provide a new mechanism to rationalize the countercyclical markups in supermarkets. The first essay concerns the formation of referral alliance. It extends the Wolinsky's (1986) model to a three-stage game with two types of products produced by a continuum of firms with each one having strength in a single type only. In the first stage, firms simultaneously decide on the formation of referral alliances, in which each alliance consists of a pair of firms producing different types of products. In the second stage, they set price simultaneously. In the third stage, each consumer who only values one type of product searches sequentially for the right product. We show that firms with low ability to deal with the unmatched consumers are positively assorted together in the formation of referral alliance with multiple equilibrium possible. The proliferation of referral alliance always benefits consumers but not necessarily firms. One the one hand, it intensifies competition and drives down the market price. On the other hand, it increases the mass of consumers participating in the search market. The price elasticity of demand together with our stability condition govern the changes in consumer and social welfare as the search cost varies. The reduction in search cost always increases consumer and social welfare only if the equilibrium is stable with elastic demand. The policy implication from our results is that it might be more effective to improve consumer and social welfare by inducing more firms to participate in the referral alliances rather than reducing the consumers' search cost. The second essay studies the incentives for stores to invest effort in serving customers if effort is costly and might be merely persuasive that reduces consumption utility. We incorporate a sales agent to each store in Wolinsky's (1986) model, in which the sales agent is paid either by fixed wage or by commissions. The commissions motivate sales agents to provide more advice, which could be indeed useful to increase clients' willingness to pay or merely persuasive without affecting it. Consumers are sophisticated that understand the dual roles of effort before visiting firms, but they might be impressionable and therefore could not stay away from the effect of persuasion when they are making the purchasing decision. When consumers are heterogeneous in terms of their impressionability, they are sorted into stores with fixed wage and commissions in the equilibrium. The composition of stores varies with the search cost and the ability of sales agents to increase consumers' willingness to pay (effectiveness of advice). When the advice is relatively ineffective, there will be an increase in mass of fixed wage stores in response to a reduction in search cost. The reverse is true when the advice is sufficiently effective. Additionally, the mass of fixed wage stores always increases as the advice becomes less effective. The competitive equilibrium outcome might imply that there are too little commission-based stores, so it could be social welfare enhancing by encouraging more consumers to visit the stores with commissions. The third essay provides a simple mechanism that rationalizes the countercyclical markups in supermarkets with the presence of a warehouse club. We first provide a mechanism on the higher supermarket prices upon the entry of the warehouse club. The new warehouse club attracts price-sensitive consumers away from supermarkets, which reduces the price elasticity of the consumers in the supermarket regime. This relaxes price competition resulting in higher supermarket prices. After that we apply the same mechanism to explain the countercyclical markups in supermarkets. During economic booms, the time value of consumers increases making them less willing to visit the warehouse club. Thus, economic booms increase the amount of price-sensitive consumers in supermarkets, intensifying price competition and inducing a lower price relative to cost in booming times. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2015. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Economics.

1 Receipt lottery Abstrakt The thesis deals with the receipt lottery, which the Ministry of Finance has introduced as a tool to make customers more motivated to accept receipts, thereby making tax collection more efficient. Even though the receipt lottery has been in place for only half a year to the date of writing this thesis, the thesis analyses and evaluates the above ideas of the Ministry of Finance. The diploma thesis examines the hypothesis whether the receipt lottery leads to better and more efficient tax collection. The thesis is divided into three parts. The first part deals with the Constitutional Court judgment related to the electronic records of sales. It focuses mainly on the reasoning of the judgment in the parts which influence the receipt lottery. The second part of the thesis is the most analytical. First, it examines whether the receipt lottery is a gambling game and on what principle it works. Next chapters in this part of the thesis describe a condition for participation in the receipt lottery. This part does not only compare the cost of the receipt lottery and the state's contribution, but it also compares the customers' participation in the receipt lottery itself and the benefits from participating. In order to determine the popularity of the receipt lottery, a survey is used, the...

Neste trabalho, abordam-se as ações de relacionamento dos fabricantes junto aos vendedores do varejo, da ótica do marketing de relacionamento. O tema torna-se relevante pela influência do vendedor varejista junto ao consumidor. A proposta é analisar como as ações são aplicadas pelos fabricantes e percebidas pelos vendedores varejistas, com a intenção de melhor compreender o processo e contribuir para sua evolução. O tema é enfocado com base nos fundamentos de marketing de relacionamento a fim de se analisar como ele se comporá quando aplicado ao ambiente comporto por canais de distribuição, venda pessoal e comportamento do consumidor. O setor de eletrodomésticos é caracterizado pelo potencial econômico, alta concentração do varejo, atuação de fabricantes de grande porte e muita sensibilidade às variáveis macroeconômicas. A análise de algumas ações de relacionamento praticadas indica que elas são fortemente orientadas para o giro de produtos no curto prazo e que programas e incentivo de vendas e treinamento são as modalidades mais aplicadas. A pesquisa realizada com fabricantes, varejistas e vendedores varejistas indica que as ações são utilizadas muito mais para auxiliar a venda, de curto prazo, promovendo giro rápido de produtos, sem nenhum efeito residual. Esse modelo é nocivo por gerar uma relação efêmera e mercenária, bem distante dos princípios do marketing de relacionamento, que busca a satisfação, o envolvimento e a lealdade a longo prazo. Desse modo, neste estudo, são detectadas oportunidades pra se estabelecer um programa de relacionamento adequado e eficiente junto aos vendedores varejistas e também são indicadas formas para que se possa atingir essa finalidade. / The subject of this study concerns the relationship os manufacturers with retailers from the point of view of relationship marketing. It becomes a relevant subject due to the influence of retailers over consumers. The purpose of this work is to analyze how market actions are put forward by manufacturers and how retailers understand these actions. This is an attempt to better understand the process and to contribute to this development. The subject is approached based on relachionship-marketing principles and on how they apply to the market (distribution channels, personal sales an consumer´s behavior). The context of this research is the sector of home appliances, marked by its economic potential, high concentration of counter sales, presence of great manufactures and high sensivity to macroeconomic changes. The analysis of some of the relationship actions indicates that they are strongly oriented to short-term product turnover. The most common modalities of actions involve promotional sales and training. Research with manufacturersm retailers and retail salespeople show that actions are used mostly to improver both short-term sales and fast-stock turnovers with no residual effect. This is a harmful model because it leads to unsteady and mercenary relationship, moving away from relationship-marketing principals that seek satisfaction, engagement and loyalty of consumers in long-term basis. In this way, this work contributes in showing opportunities and means of establishing an accurate program of appropriate relationship with retailers.

Diversas formas de interação entre consumidor e vendedor podem ocorrer durante a prestação do serviço no varejo. Os vendedores buscam por locais de trabalho que os valorizem e propiciem o desenvolvimento adequado do serviço ao consumidor, assim garantindo a qualidade na interação com o cliente. Os clientes, por sua vez, possuem cada vez mais informações para sua decisão de compra, e buscam por varejistas que entendam seu perfil e necessidades, além de vendedores que atendam suas expectativas durante a venda. Entre eles as interações no varejo podem ocorrer através da abordagem, comunicação e atendimento, distância e contato físico, interação com a loja e outros participantes, e variam de acordo com os diferentes perfis e culturas. A complexidade dos comportamentos e preferências desses agentes, aliado à evolução do mercado, e aos poucos estudos no assunto, tornam relevante compreender como esses agentes interagem no ambiente do varejo, especificamente no segmento do surfwear, que é o objetivo desta pesquisa. Para tal propósito a revisão da literatura abordou os seguintes tópicos: o ambiente de serviços, a variável humana no ambiente de serviços e os tipos de interação entre vendedores e consumidores no varejo. Foram observadas 40 interações entre os consumidores e funcionários da loja, e realizadas entrevistas semiestruturadas com 31 clientes e 10 vendedores envolvidos no momento do serviço. Os dados foram coletados em três lojas pertencentes ao mesmo varejista nas cidades de São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro e Porto Alegre. Os principais achados sugerem que as interações não possuem uma sequência lógica de acontecimento, mas indicam que em relação à abordagem, os consumidores frequentemente são abordados na entrada da loja, e quanto ao atendimento e comunicação, eles valorizam ser chamados pelo nome e a qualidade do conteúdo presente no discurso do vendedor. Na distância e contato físico, preferem manter uma distância social dos funcionários, sem muito toque ou contato, e na interação com a loja, são mais detalhistas com relação ao ambiente e interagem pouco quando há foco na compra, assim como não se preocupam quando percebem que há outras pessoas no mesmo ambiente. Por fim, foram discutidos os principais achados de acordo com a literatura consultada, propostas ações de melhorias para os varejistas do segmento e sugeridas pesquisas futuras para maior compreensão dos fatores identificados neste trabalho. / Various forms of interaction between consumer and seller may occur during the provision of service at retail. Salespeople are looking for workplaces that value and conducive to the proper development of customer service, thus ensuring the quality of customer interaction. Customers, in turn, have more and more information for their buying decision, and look for retailers who understand their profile and needs, as well as vendors that meet your expectations during the sale. According to the literature review, the retail interactions can occur through the approach, communication and attendance, distance and physical contact, store interaction and other participants, and may vary according to the different profiles and cultures. The complexity of the behaviors and preferences of these agents, together with the evolution of the market, and few studies on the subject, make it important to understand how consumer and salesperson interact in the retail environment, specifically in surfwear segment, which is the goal of this research. For this purpose the literature review addressed the following topics: the service environment, the human variable in the service environment and the types of interaction between salespeople and consumers at retail. 40 interactions between consumers and store employees were observed and conducted semi-structured interviews with 31 customers and 10 salespeople involved at the time of service in three stores belonging to the same retailer in the cities of São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro and Porto Alegre. The main findings suggest that interactions do not have a logical sequence of events, but indicates that consumers are often approached in the store entrance, value when they are called by name and the quality of content in the discourse of the salesperson, prefer to keep a social distance of employees without much touch or physical contact, are more detail oriented with respect to the store environment and usually do not realize when there are other people in the store. Finally, we discussed the main findings according to the literature, as well as proposed improvement actions for the segment of retailers and suggested future research for greater understanding of the factors identified in this study.

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.