Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science

Sleep, Stefan; Bharadwaj, Sundar; Lam, Son

doi: 10.1007/s11747-014-0395-4pmid: N/A

To successfully satisfy large customers and meet financial objectives, dedicated sales teams need to manage two boundaries: a boundary within the selling firm and one with the customer organization. However, little is known about the process of managing these multiple boundaries. This study integrates job demands-resource theory with research on key account management and sales teams to examine (1) the main effect of customer boundary spanning on perceived customer satisfaction and team performance and (2) the moderating role of within-firm coordination activities at three levels: top management, cross-functional, and within-team. An empirical test of the model with data from 167 sales teams finds that the interaction between customer boundary spanning and within-firm coordination activities has opposite effects on perceived customer satisfaction and team performance outcomes. The results are robust to endogeneity and heteroskedasticity concerns.

Wu, Qingsheng; Luo, Xueming; Slotegraaf, Rebecca; Aspara, Jaakko

doi: 10.1007/s11747-014-0396-3pmid: N/A

Firms are increasingly collaborating with their competitors for new product development (NPD), yet the literature is almost silent on stock market reactions to these horizontal collaborations. Given the different skills and activities needed in each NPD phase, we analyze the differential stock market reactions to horizontal collaborations in the initiation, development, and commercialization phases of NPD. Analyses of a unique and comprehensive dataset with 831 NPD announcements of horizontal collaborations over 12 years reveal that, on average, the stock market reacts favorably to NPD-related horizontal collaboration in the initiation phase, but unfavorably in the development and commercialization phases. Further, these effects are asymmetrically moderated by the innovativeness of the new product and the collaborating competitor’s relative market and technological powers. Overall, our results highlight that failing to examine the specific NPD phase leads to an incomplete understanding of stock market reactions to horizontal collaboration for NPD. We offer theoretical and managerial implications regarding horizontal collaboration for each NPD phase, along with the relevant NPD project and competitor contingencies.

Mikolon, Sven; Quaiser, Benjamin; Wieseke, Jan

doi: 10.1007/s11747-014-0398-1pmid: N/A

Capitalizing on a large-scale field experimental dataset involving 1,254 airline customers, this study introduces customer inoculation as a new, proactive strategy for mitigating the negative consequences that service failures have on customer satisfaction. Results confirm that customer inoculation eases the decrease in satisfaction when customers experience a service failure. Additional analyses indicate that customer inoculation does not harm customer satisfaction if no service failure occurs. This finding sets inoculation apart from expectation management and underscores the potential inoculation has for marketing practice. Furthermore, contrary to traditional recovery strategies for addressing service failures, customer inoculation operates in advance of a service failure and thereby circumvents potential drawbacks of traditional strategies. In sum, customer inoculation represents a novel strategy for addressing service failures with respect to existing marketing literature and expands the scope of action for companies when they cannot avoid offering occasionally flawed services.

Claudy, Marius; Garcia, Rosanna; O’Driscoll, Aidan

doi: 10.1007/s11747-014-0399-0pmid: N/A

Behavioral research shows that reasons for and reasons against adopting innovations differ qualitatively, and they influence consumers’ decisions in dissimilar ways. This has important implications for theorists and managers, as overcoming barriers that cause resistance to innovation calls for marketing approaches other than promoting reasons for adoption of new products and services. Consumer behavior frameworks in diffusion of innovation (DOI) studies have largely failed to distinctly account for reasons against adoption. Indeed, no study to date has tested the relative influence of adoption and resistance factors in a single framework. This research aims to address this shortcoming by applying a novel consumer behavior model (i.e., behavioral reasoning theory) to test the relative influence of both reasons for and, importantly, reasons against adoption in consumers’ innovation adoption decisions. Based on two empirical studies, one with a product and a second with a service innovation, findings demonstrate that behavioral reasoning theory provides a suitable framework to model the mental processing of innovation adoption. Implications for managers and researchers are discussed.