Individualism and collectivism

This article advances our understanding of the influence of affect in consumers’ responses to brief, nonpersonal service encounters. This study contributes to the services marketing literature by examining for mundane service transactions the impact of customer-displayed emotion and affect on assessments of the service encounter and the overall experience. Observational and perceptual data from customers were matched with frontline employees in 200 transaction-specific encounters. The results of this study suggest that consumers’ evaluations of the service encounter correlate highly with their displayed emotions during the interaction and postencounter mood states. Finally, the findings indicate that frontline employees’perceptions of the encounter are not aligned with those of their customers. The managerial implications of these findings are briefly discussed.

The Role of Emotions in Service Encounters

Industry 5.0: A survey on enabling technologies and potential applications

Persuasive games for health are designed to alter human behavior or attitude using various Persuasive Technology (PT) strategies. Recent years have witnessed an increasing number of such games, which treat players as a monolithic group by adopting a one-size-fits-all design approach. Studies of gameplay motivation have shown that this is a bad approach because a motivational approach that works for one individual may actually demotivate behavior in others. In an attempt to resolve this weakness, we conducted a large-scale study on 1,108 gamers to examine the persuasiveness of ten PT strategies that are commonly employed in persuasive game design, and the receptiveness of seven gamer personalities (gamer types identified by BrianHex) to the ten PT strategies. We developed models showing the receptiveness of the gamer types to the PT strategies and created persuasive profiles, which are lists of strategies that can be employed to motivate behavior for each gamer type. We then explored the differences between the models and, based on the results, proposed two approaches for data-driven persuasive game design. The first is the one-size-fits-all approach that will motivate a majority of gamers, while not demotivating any player. The second is the personalized approach that will best persuade a particular type of gamer. We also compiled a list of the best and the worst strategies for each gamer type. Finally, to bridge the gap between game design and PT researchers, we map common game mechanics to the persuasive system design strategies.

Modeling the efficacy of persuasive strategies for different gamer types in serious games for health

Demonstrations of marketing effectiveness currently proceed along two parallel tracks: Quantitative researchers model the direct sales effects of the marketing mix, and advertising and branding experts trace customer mind-set metrics (e.g., awareness, affect). The authors merge the two tracks and analyze the added explanatory value of including customer mind-set metrics in a sales response model that already accounts for short- and long-term effects of advertising, price, distribution, and promotion. Vector autoregressive modeling of the metrics for more than 60 brands of four consumer goods shows that advertising awareness, brand consideration, and brand liking account for almost one-third of explained sales variance. Competitive and own mind-set metrics make a similar contribution. Wear-in times reveal that mind-set metrics can be used as advance warning signals that allow enough time for managerial action before market performance itself is affected. Specific marketing actions affect specific mind-set metrics, with the strongest overall impact for distribution. The findings suggest that modelers should include mind-set metrics in sales response models and branding experts should include competition in their tracking research.

Mindset Metrics in Market Response Models: An Integrative Approach

To conduct a bibliometric analysis, several researchers retrieve publications from Scopus or/and Web of Science (WOS) databases. When these scholars consider both Scopus and WOS databases, they mostly make two bibliometric analysis: one from Scopus database and the other from WOS database. A few researchers merge the two databases to conduct a single analysis, but they do not specify how they did it. This paper aims to advance the bibliometric analysis by addressing two points. First, this research claims that making a bibliometric analysis that takes information from Scopus or/and separately from WOS cannot give a broader view of knowledge and tendencies in a field. To prove this claim, we retrieve papers from Scopus and WOS databases to make a bibliometric analysis of sales force literature that covers from 1912 to 2019. Results show that there are many disparities between WOS and merged database, and between this latter and WOS database regarding bibliometric analyses, especially among primary productive authors, the most influential papers, and keyword occurrences. Second, this research proposes a four-step procedure that merges these two databases to allow more reliable bibliometric analyses. This procedure was explicitly shown by using the bibliometric analysis of sales force literature during 1912–2019.

Why and how to merge Scopus and Web of Science during bibliometric analysis: the case of sales force literature from 1912 to 2019

Relationship between sales force reputation and customer behavior: Role of experiential value added by sales force

Industry 4.0 and its impact in plastics industry: A literature review

Personality traits and adaptive behavior are central issues in research on call center performance. However, the current literature offers little guidance on the relationship between personality traits and adaptive behavior and how they work together to enhance employee performance. This study investigates the mediating role of adaptive behavior between Five-Factor traits and employee performance with customers. Empirical evidence from a Canadian call center supports this proposition for three Five-Factor traits. Managerial implications are discussed.

/pdf/personality-traits-and-performance-the-mediating-role-of-1ifqhev13z.pdf

Personality Traits and Performance: The Mediating Role of Adaptive Behavior in Call Centers

Purpose




Drawing on socioanalytic theory, this paper aims to explore whether a moderation mediation model can describe the mechanism linking salesperson social reputation (perceived stability and plasticity) and performance (customer share of wallet) in relationship marketing. The mediator is the salesperson’s overall equity, and the moderator is the salesperson-customer congruence.




Design/methodology/approach




A structured questionnaire was used to obtain data from 233 customers, served by 44 personal finance advisors at five banking agencies in Canada.




Findings




A multilevel approach showed that both perceived stability and perceived plasticity predict salesperson equity and performance. In addition, the empirical results indicated that the relationship between perceived stability and salesperson performance is partially mediated by salesperson overall equity. However, equity fully mediated the relationship between perceived plasticity and salesperson performance. Finally, the salesperson-customer congruence moderated the effect of both perceived stability and plastic on the salesperson overall equity.




Research limitations/implications




This research suggests that the moderation mediation model enables predicting the relationship between the perceived personality and performance. From a managerial perspective, the author encourages sales managers to pay attention to salespersons’ equity development as well as their performance. Notably, the author suggests that sales managers support and monitor salespeople with regard to improving their social status as well as their social popularity in their interactions with customers.




Originality/value




Previous research in sales force literature focuses on salespersons’ self-personality to predict sales performance. To the best of the author’s knowledge, this study is the first to show it is important to consider the perceived personality of a salesperson in predicting their performance. This study is also the first to introduce the salesperson reputation concept and its dimensions (perceived stability and plasticity).

Said Echchakoui

Papers

Why and how to merge Scopus and Web of Science during bibliometric analysis: the case of sales force literature from 1912 to 2019

Relationship between sales force reputation and customer behavior: Role of experiential value added by sales force

Industry 4.0 and its impact in plastics industry: A literature review

Personality Traits and Performance: The Mediating Role of Adaptive Behavior in Call Centers

Effect of salesperson personality on sales performance from the customer’s perspective