Includes appendix and photos
This study examines the dynamics of consumer-brand identification (CBI) and its antecedents in the context of the launch of a new brand. Three focal drivers of CBI with a new brand are examined, namely: perceived quality (the instrumental driver), self-brand congruity (the symbolic driver), and consumer innate innovativeness (a trait-based driver). Using longitudinal survey data, the authors fi…
Salespeople represent a primary source of competitive intelligence (CI), but the contextual factors that influence the performance impact of salesperson CI quality remain underresearched. The authors develop a framework to examine the performance impact of CI quality at the individual salesperson and sales district levels, with sales district CI quality diversity and sales managers? network cen…
This article reconciles mixed findings about the performance impact of middle managers' strategy involvement. We propose that the relationship between middle managers' adaptive strategy implementation?through upward and downward influence?and objective business performance can be curvilinear and contingent on formal and informal structures. Applying a multilevel perspective to social networks, …
Sales contests are short-term incentives that managers use to raise sales effort. The extant marketing theory predicts that the optimal prize structure should have two characteristics: (1) The number of prizewinners should be greater than one, and (2) prize values should be unique and rank ordered. However, this theory has not been empirically examined. This article presents two empirical studi…
There is little empirical research on internal marketing despite its intuitive appeal and anecdotal accounts of its benefits. Adopting a social identity theory perspective, the authors propose that internal marketing is fundamentally a process in which leaders instill into followers a sense of oneness with the organization, formally known as "organizational identification" (OI). The authors tes…