Manfred Krafft

• Prof. Dr.
• Chair at University of Münster

In their transition from product-based to value-based offerings, B2B suppliers progress through different levels of servitization. These levels are characterized by the type of offering sold (products, services, bundles, or solutions) and the nature of business interaction (transactional vs. relational). This study sheds light on which configuratio...

Firms using a direct selling (DS) distribution channel delegate selling and sales management responsibilities to an independent-contractor distributor force. The DS firm’s inability to directly control distributors’ efforts, and the fact that most active distributors choose to work part-time rather than full-time at their DS business, makes an exam...

Knowledge of a customer's willingness to pay (WTP) at early stages of product development is key to the success of innovations. However, since innovative products do not exist yet, only the hypothetical WTP can be surveyed, inducing a measurement bias. Unfortunately, little is known about the factors that induce this bias and how it differs dependi...

This research presents a novel, conceptual perspective on distinctive opportunities available to retailers with a physical location to create reasons for customers to visit the physical store. A multi-method approach is used, where we combine the study of more than 25,000 online announcements of new approaches implemented in physical stores with 12...

Purpose As empirical insights into when salespeople should integrate information and communication technology (ICT) into their sales tasks are limited, the purpose of this study is to investigate the impact of salespeople’s ICT orientation on role stress by considering the interplay of individual salesperson characteristics and the complexity of th...

Brick-and-mortar grocery retailers that undertake major format changes often do so in astaggered rollout and radically transform just one store at a time. This approach begs twoquestions: What effects does a radical store transformation have on existing customers’ salesat the transformed store (own-effect) and at the chain’s nearby untransformed st...

Caused by increasing competitive pressure, more and more companies in B2B markets are turning from providers of products into providers of customer solutions. Solutions are highly individualized offerings consisting of product and service components that are specifically tailored to customer needs. The process of selling such offerings encompasses...

Infolge der zunehmenden Nutzung digitaler Technologien und der daraus resultierenden digitalen Transformation im Vertrieb hat sich Inside Sales für viele Unternehmen als ein vielversprechendes Vertriebskonzept herausgestellt. Im Rahmen des Inside Sales nutzen Vertriebsmitarbeiter Telekommunikationstechnologien für den gesamten Verkaufsprozess. Die...

Multi-Tier Loyalty Programs (MTLPs) have become a popular marketing instrument to develop customer-firm relationships. Within a MTLP, customers are assigned to different tiers based on their purchase behavior. In this article, we examine whether and when tiers in the MTLP are effective in influencing customer purchase behavior, specifically share o...

Questions like whether a customer is going to buy a product (purchase vs. non- purchase) or whether a borrower is creditworthy (pay off debt vs. credit default) are typical in business practice and research. From a statistical perspective, these Dr. Sebastian Tillmanns is an Assistant Professor at the Institute of Marketing at the Westfälische Wilh...

Organizations across industries are increasingly using Artificial Intelligence (AI) systems to support their innovation processes, supply chains, marketing and sales and other business functions. Implementing AI, firms report efficiency gains from automation and enhanced decision-making thanks to more relevant, accurate and timely predictions. By e...

As online and digital transformations disrupt their business, retailers are aware of the crucial role of collecting, analyzing, and translating consumer data into competitive advantages. Underlying these disclosures of data from consumers to firms are, often implicit, terms that guide consumers’ expectations regarding the data exchange. This manusc...

Zentrale Erkenntnis dieses Beitrags ist es, dass die Delegation von Preissetzungskompetenz an niedrigere Hierarchieebenen im Unternehmen nicht unabhängig von organisatorischen Gegebenheiten betrachtet werden kann. Der Erfolg einer Kompetenzdelegation wird maßgeblich von Faktoren wie der Unternehmenskultur, dem Grad der vorhandenen Informationsasymm...

Artificial Intelligence (AI) and 5G connectivity have been identified as drivers of the so-called Fourth Industrial Revolution (FIR). AI and 5G, through emerging technologies such as blockchain, gene editing, Internet of Things sensors, nanotechnology, or 3D printing, accelerates a blurring of boundaries between digital, biological and physical sph...

Wie wirkt es auf Kunden und ihr Kaufverhalten, wenn sich ein bekannter Händler mit einem radikal neuen Konzept präsentiert? Das Institut für Marketing in Münster präsentiert in einer groß angelegten Studie in Kooperation mit der Einzelhandelskette Real überraschende Ergebnisse.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) and 5G connectivity have been identified as drivers of the so-called Fourth Industrial Revolution (FIR). AI and 5G, through emerging technologies such as blockchain, gene editing, Internet of Things sensors, nanotechnology, or 3D printing accelerate a blurring of boundaries between digital, biological, and physical sphe...

Tobias Fredebeul-Krein und Manfred Krafft analysieren den koordinierten Einsatz von Direktmarketing und Verkaufsaußendienst im Business-to-Business-Kontext auf der Basis einer explorativen Studie. Es gelingt ihnen so, zentrale Determinanten, Ziele und Erfolgsfaktoren an dieser Schnittstelle zu kennzeichnen und zu systematisieren.

The purpose of the paper is to provide managers with guidelines regarding the levels of loyalty and customer satisfaction to obtain high levels of ROA. For instance, loyal may not always produce high ROA, but short-term customers may provide a high level of profits. We use 349 firm-year observations using a mix of international and U.S. data. and f...

Firms can substantially profit from customer referrals, but they must understand the different stages of the referral process to determine what drives the number of referrals (first stage), conversion (second stage), and average contribution margin per referral (third stage). Applying a framework that integrates perceptual and behavioral drivers, t...

Sandra Hake und Manfred Krafft diskutieren die Vorteilhaftigkeit der Delegation von Preissetzungskompetenz an den Verkaufsaußendienst. Mithilfe einer Abwägung von Pro und Kontra identifizieren sie Determinanten einer erfolgreichen Delegation von Preissetzungskompetenz.

Obwohl B‐to‐B‐Marken substanziell zum Unternehmensgewinn beitragen können, sind sie bislang kaum Gegenstand der Forschung. Hier setzt die vorliegende Studie an. Sie zeigt für drei Länder und sieben Branchen, dass die Markenassoziationen „Nachhaltigkeit und verantwortungsbewusste Unternehmensführung“ und „Innovation und Kompetenz“ maßgeblich die Stä...

Nowadays, growing online retailers threaten traditional offline retailers. Stationary retailers need to find ways to differentiate themselves from competition and enhance customer experience. In light of this, the physical store itself with its specific atmosphere can serve as a unique environment that positively stimulates customers’ senses and in...

Warenkorbabbrüche sind ein immer häufiger auftretendes Phänomen bei Online-Kaufprozessen. Nicht einmal die Hälfte aller Shopper, die Artikel in einen Warenkorb legen, schließen den Bestellvorgang auch ab. Diese abgebrochenen Warenkörbe stellen für jeden Onlinehändler eine große Herausforderung dar, da potenzielle Umsätze verloren gehen. Daher ist e...

Questions like whether a customer is going to buy a product (purchase vs. non-purchase) or whether a borrower is creditworthy (pay off debt vs. credit default) are typical in business practice and research. From a statistical perspective, these questions are characterized by a dichotomous dependent variable. Traditional regression analyses are not...

This study investigates the role of elite loyalty program members in influencing other customers to adopt a hierarchical loyalty program (or HLP) in a business market. Drawing from the social psychology literature, the theoretical framework proposes that elite status members exert a disproportionate positive influence on neighboring non-members to...

Little is known about the influence of motivators that drive consumers to grant permission to be contacted via personalized communication. In this study, a framework is developed to investigate the effect of select drivers of consumers granting permission to receive personalized messages. The authors distinguish between drivers related to benefit a...

Unternehmen stehen vor der Herausforderung, Kundenbeziehungen profitabel zu managen, da sich traditionelle Marketingmaßnahmen als immer weniger effektiv erweisen bei einer gleichzeitigen Verwässerung und Vervielfältigung der verschiedenen Marketingkanäle (Kumar und Reinartz 2012, S. 6 ff.). Aus ökonomischer Sicht ist es daher angezeigt, Kunden diff...

Der Online- und Versandhandel ist durch ein starkes Wachstum und gleichzeitig zunehmenden Wettbewerbsdruck gekennzeichnet. In diesem Kontext kommt der Bindung und Ausschöpfung von Bestandskunden eine immer größer werdende Bedeutung zu, da die Neukundengewinnung und Kundenreaktivierung im Gegensatz zur Kundenbindung mit vergleichsweise hohen Kosten...

Customers differ in their purchase behavior, profitability, attitude towards the firm, etc. These differences between customers have led to numerous firms introducing multi-tier loyalty programs. A multi-tier loyalty program explicitly distinguishes between customers by means of hierarchical tiers (e.g. silver, gold, platinum) and assigns customers...

Steady customer losses put firms under pressure to acquire new accounts, which is both costly and risky. Lacking knowledge about their prospects, firms often use a large array of predictors obtained from list vendors, which rapidly creates massive high-dimensional data problems. Selecting the appropriate variables and their functional relationships...

Das Ziel der vorliegenden Studie war es, den Zusammenhang zwischen der Implementierung von CRM-Prozessen und der Kundenzufriedenheit zu analysieren. Unsere Untersuchung ist einigen grundsätzlichen Beschränkunfen unterworfen. CRM ist immer noch ein relativ junges Forschungsgebiet, dessen Prozesse sich im Zeitablauf mit großer Wahrscheinlichkeit noch...

Mobile in-store advertising is becoming increasingly important, as it offers new options for retailers to communicate with customers at the point of sale. This study investigates how mobile in-store advertising should be designed in order to be most effective. The authors identify three value drivers (price promotion, location, and personalization)...

While the topic of Customer Relationship Management (CRM) has generated an increasing amount of research attention in recent years, still lacking is a comprehensive overview that helps to explain how companies can implement CRM successfully. To address these issues, this article identifies and discusses factors that are associated with a greater de...

Interest in customer reacquisition has increased as firms embrace the concept of customer relationship management. Using survey and transactional data from defected subscribers of a publishing company, we investigate how defected customers evaluate their propensity to return to the company prior to any win-back offer. We introduce a new variable fo...

Marketing channels are among the most important elements of any value chain. This is because the bulk of a nation’s manufacturing output flows through them. The intermediaries (e.g., distributors, wholesalers, retailers) constituting marketing channels perform specific distribution functions, such as transportation, storage, sales, financing, and r...

In vielen Unternehmen des Industriegütersektors kommt dem Vertrieb und damit der Vertriebssteuerung eine zentrale Bedeutung zu. Aufgaben der Vertriebssteuerung sind die Beeinflussung, Lenkung und Kontrolle der Aktivitäten der Mitarbeiter einer Vertriebsorganisation mit Hilfe von Steuerungsinstrumenten. Diese sollen dabei dazu führen, dass ein erwün...

Die digitale Revolution zwingt Unternehmen zum Umdenken. Mehr Ansprache-Kanäle verursachen mehr Werbedruck beim Empfänger. Gerade in Bezug auf die digitalen Medien ist die Gesetzgebung angetreten, den Verbraucher vor unerwünschter Werbung zu schützen. Kurz gesagt: Ohne Opt-in geht gar nichts. Die Werbe-Einwilligung steht am Anfang aller Kampagnen....

In this chapter, our overall contribution is to demonstrate and discuss the important role of customer acquisition in customer equity management. Our main claim is that customer equity management should govern acquisition strategies as they predetermine later outcomes to a substantial degree. These underlying dynamics in the customer portfolio are...

This study analyzes the effect of brand associations and marketing-mix instrument perceptions on brand strength for B2B firms. Although B2B brands may contribute substantially to firm profit, only little research has been directed at them. We close this research gap by analyzing a unique data set that spans across three countries and seven industri...

Die digitale Revolution zwingt Unternehmen zum Umdenken. Mehr Ansprache-Kanäle verursachen mehr Werbedruck beim Empfänger. Gerade in Bezug auf die digitalen Medien ist die Gesetzgebung angetreten, den Verbraucher vor unerwünschter Werbung zu schützen. Kurz gesagt: Ohne Opt-in geht gar nichts. Die Werbe-Einwilligung steht am Anfang aller Kampagnen....

Das Vertriebsmanagement hat sich über die Zeit immer schneller verändern müssen. Wohin die Reise zukünftig geht und worauf sich der Vertrieb in Zukunft einzustellen hat, wird anhand einer Auswahl von zehn zentralen Entwicklungslinien beschrieben.

Tobias Fredebeul-Krein und Manfred Krafft analysieren den koordinierten Einsatz von Direktmarketing und Verkaufsaußendienst im Business-to-Business-Kontext auf der Basis einer explorativen Studie. Es gelingt ihnen so, zentrale Determinanten, Ziele und Erfolgsfaktoren an dieser Schnittstelle zu kennzeichnen und zu systematisieren.

Since little is known about whether both marketing and sales functions pay off in market-oriented companies, this research analyzes the interaction between market orientation and the departmental power of marketing and sales within the firm. Data collected across five industries on the marginal effect of marketing’s departmental power on business p...

Dem Kundenbeziehungsmanagement (auch Customer-Relationship-Management / CRM genannt) kommt neben der Markenführung die größte Bedeutung im Marketing zu. Unternehmen erkennen zunehmend, dass überlegenes Kundenwissen und die individuelle Pflege von Geschäftsbeziehungen zum differenzierenden Merkmal im Wettbewerb werden kann. Es ist Ziel dieses Beitra...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to investigate how the service constellation perspective affects innovation strategies and potentially contributes to the innovation literature, proposing a research agenda. Design/methodology/approach – By analyzing the notion of a service constellation, the authors provide an overview of major implications...

Designing effective direct mail pieces is considered a key success factor in direct marketing. However, related published empirical research is scarce while design recommendations are manifold and often conflicting. Compared with prior work, our study aims to provide more elaborate and empirically validated findings for the effects of direct mail d...

Money-back guarantees (MBGs) and low-price guarantees (LPGs) are frequently implemented in retailing practice to positively influence consumer behavior. In this literature review 28 MBG and 30 LPG studies are systemized and discussed. While both a behavioral and an economic research stream exist, the focus of this review is on the effects of MBGs a...

Compensation and control systems offer much for study. In this paper, we provide directions for future research by considering the system of influences that operate to shape salesperson behavior in the presence of formal and informal systems attempting to influence behaviors and outcomes. By applying vertical dyad linkage theory to the issue of con...

Dialogmarketing hat einen positiven Einfluss auf die Markenwahrnehmung von Konsumenten. Es bietet darüber hinaus vielversprechende Möglichkeiten zur Differenzierung bei der Kommunikation von Markenbotschaften, da die konsumentenseitige Evaluation von Dialogmarketingmedien sich deutlich von der Verarbeitung klassischer Medien unterscheidet. Viele Un...

Die Intensivierung des internationalen Wettbewerbs sowie der stetige Wandel des technologischen Umfeldes hat in den letzten Jahrzehnten bei vielen Unternehmen zu einem Umdenken geführt. So hat sich der Fokus immer stärker von einzelnen, kurzfristig angelegten Transaktionen zwischen anonymen Marktteilnehmern hin zum Ausbau langfristiger Anbieter-Kun...

Wayne D Hoyer, Rajesh Chandy, Matilda Dorotic, Manfred Krafft and Siddharth S Singh, ‘Consumer cocreation in new product development’, Journal of Service Research 13, no. 3, 2010.

In recent years, the combination of economic growth and population growth in emerging markets and less developed markets has accelerated the progression of globalization of retailing and globalization by retailers. The challenges faced by global and globalizing retailers (retailers who currently have or intend to establish a market presence in matu...

Customer Relationship Management (CRM) is widely accepted as an effective approach for collecting, analyzing, and translating valuable customer information into managerial action. However, the potential of CRM has been investigated only in the context of existing products. CRM’s potential to aid in future new product development (NPD) has been negl...

Die Bedeutung des Beziehungs-Marketing hat in den letzten Jahren sowohl in der Praxis als auch in der wissenschaftlichen Forschung stark zugenommen. Insbesondere die jüngere Marketing-Literatur ist von zahlreichen Beiträgen geprägt, die sich mit Konstrukten und Phänomenen von Kundenbeziehungen, wie Kundennähe, -orientierung, -zufriedenheit und -bin...

Inspired by Erin Anderson’s contributions to sales force research, this paper focuses on research that utilizes quantitative models to investigate important questions in sales force management. The purpose is to summarize several significant developments in knowledge over the last 40years and identify major opportunities for impactful theoretical,...

The area of consumer cocreation is in its infancy and many aspects are not well understood. In this article, we outline and discuss a conceptual framework that focuses on the degree of consumer cocreation in new product development (NPD). The authors examine (a) the major stimulators and impediments to this process, (b) the impact of cocreation at...

Since 2000, customer management (CM) research has evolved and has had a significant impact on the marketing discipline. In an increasingly networked society where customers can interact easily with other customers and firms through social networks and other new media, the authors propose that customer engagement is an important new development in C...

Many retailers have collected large amounts of customer data using, for example, loyalty programs. We provide an overview of the extant literature on customer relationship management (CRM), with a specific focus on retailing. We discuss how retailers can gather customer data and how they can analyze these data to gain useful customer insights. We p...

In industrial selling situations, the questions of what factors drive pricing authority delegation to salespeople and under what conditions price delegation is beneficial for the firm are often asked. To advance knowledge in this area, we (1) develop and empirically test a framework of important drivers of price delegation based on agency-theoretic...

Wie sollte ein Unternehmen auf wirtschaftliche Abschwungphasen reagieren? Besser als Reagieren ist ein proaktiver Ansatz, der die Bedeutung von Marketing und Vertrieb hervorhebt und diesen Funktionsbereichen anstatt weniger mehr Mittel einräumt. Ein derartiger Ansatz betrachtet die Krise als Chance, den Wettbewerbern Marktanteile abzunehmen und dad...

At the end of 2007, Germany’s METRO Group had over 280,000 employees and an annual turnover of 66 billion Euro making it the fourth largest retailer in the world behind Wal-Mart (a turnover of 271 billion Euro), Carrefour (82 billion Euro) and Tesco (68 billion Euro). Further, nearly 60% of METRO Group’s revenues came from outside Germany. The stor...

This paper gives a basic comprehension of the partial least squares approach. In this context, the aim of this paper is to develop a guide for the evaluation of structural equation models, using the current statistical methods methodological knowledge by specifically considering the Partial-Least-Squares (PLS) approach’s requirements. As an advanta...

Retailing is a challenging industry to enter and be successful in. How do great retail businesses get started and grow? What are the hallmarks of a successful retail entrepreneur? Most students of retailing know the story of Sam Walton and how he founded and built up Wal-Mart to a point from which it could surge ahead to eventually become the numbe...

The area of consumer cocreation is in its infancy and many aspects are not well understood. In this article, we outline and discuss a conceptual framework that focuses on the degree of consumer cocreation in new product development (NPD). The authors examine (a) the major stimulators and impediments to this process, (b) the impact of cocreation at...

Retailing in the new millennium stands as an exciting, complex and critical sector of business in most developed as well as emerging economies. Today, the retailing industry is being buffeted by a number of forces simultaneously, e.g., increasing competition within and across retailing formats, the growth of online retailing, the advent of ‘radio f...

Selbst bei extensiven Unternehmensaktivitäten, die auf die Erhöhung der Kundenzufriedenheit mit dem Anbieter, dessen Leistungen und Mitarbeiter zielen, ist eine hundertprozentige Kundenbindung als unerreichbares Ziel anzusehen (Dodson 2000). Die Gründe hierfür liegen in den intensivierten Vertriebs-und Werbeaktivitäten der Wettbewerber und einer zu...

The allocation of decision rights is an integral component of designing organizational architecture. Economists have long understood the importance of co-locating decision rights with the knowledge that is valuable to those decisions. Following this prescription, marketing scholars have developed strong theoretical arguments in favor of delegating...

This chapter's aim is to synthesize and present insights relevant to CRM process implementation in retail banking drawn from the marketing research literature. The authors first summarize strategic concepts from the marketing discipline that they believe are fundamental to the CRM process, but appear to be frequently forgotten in actual implementat...

Increasingly, firms use more and different routes to market. This study investigates whether such heterogeneity in the variety of routes to market can be explained systematically. More specifically, the authors examine how (1) the type and level of a firm's customer orientation and (2) the type and degree of customer search behavior influences the...

Development of systematic optimization approaches of marketing investments into new customers, based on an early estimation of their future business potential

This text is the first to define the characteristics of international direct marketing, from cross-border efforts to campaigns for customers of foreign origin. ■ It includes the first-ever rough estimate of the volume of international direct marketing. ■ The appropriate decision criteria for choosing international direct marketing, and the procedur...

Die deutsche Wirtschaft weist seit Ende des Zweiten Weltkriegs insgesamt vier deutlich erkennbare gesamtwirtschaftliche Abschwungphasen auf: die auf der Steigerung desÖlpreises beruhenden Rezessionen 1974/75 und 1981/82, die nach der Wiedervereinigung Deutschlands 1993 einsetzende Rezession, sowie die durch außenhandels- und strukturbedingten Nachf...

Direct marketing is a fast-growing and dominant domestic marketing instrument in many countries. Direct marketing follows the path of the rapid advances of globalization: international direct marketing (IDM) is already a multi-billion dollar business and an attractive instrument for foreign market entry and international customer communication. Thi...