Mita Sujan

• Tulane University

Recent research indicates that sales productivity can be substantially improved if salespeople place more emphasis on an aspect of working smarter, i.e., practice adaptive selling. This paper suggests ten approaches that sales managers can use to improve sales performance by encouraging and assisting their salespeople to practice adaptive selling.

We make a distinction between primarily effort-based and skilled-based tasks and examine the correspondence between emotion and task. We reverse attribution theory results wherein failure to expend effort engenders regret and accomplishing tasks with skill engenders pride, and propose these emotions as antecedents to effort-based and skill-based be...

The emotional state of many expecting parents shifts from unbridled joy to anxiety as the reality of learning to care for a newborn and forsaking their current lifestyle sinks in. Similarly, consumers have different concerns when they first hear about a new product compared to the time when they consider buying it. If the buying decision is in the...

Drawing on theories of new product adoption and inter-temporal choice, we show in cross-sectional and longitudinal investigations (Study 1) that when people consider adopting a new product in the distant future, they are more concerned about performance and symbolic benefit uncertainties. In contrast, in the near future, the concerns are more about...

We examine the role of high self-accountability emotions in enhancing compliance with fear appeals. In two field experiments, we find that relative to straight fear appeals (negative) or adding hope (positive), which ascribes low accountability to the self, action-facilitative coping, intentions, and behaviors (using sunscreen, eating high fiber fo...

Abstract Electronic agents help consumers,locate new products and generate demand,by recommending,products with which consumers,may be unfamiliar. We explore the effects of these unfamiliar recommendations,by addressing the following questions: (1) How do unfamiliar recommendations,affect consumers’ attitudes towards the agent? (2) How does informa...

Through three studies we demonstrate that contextually detailed ads are facilitative in enhancing brand attitudes and intentions under anticipatory self-referencing, whereas ads stripped of contextual detail are facilitative in enhancing brand attitudes and intentions under retrospective self-referencing. We find that when minimal ad information is...

The authors develop several hypotheses regarding the integration of moment-to-moment emotional responses into overall ad judgments, using the psychological literature dealing with people's preferences for sequences of hedonic outcomes, and they conduct three studies to test these predictions. The results of Study 1 indicate that consumers' global a...

The authors develop several hypotheses regarding the integration of moment-to-moment emotional responses into overall ad judgments, using the psychological literature dealing with people's preferences for sequences of hedonic outcomes, and they conduct three studies to test these predictions. The results of Study 1 indicate that consumers’ global a...

The authors investigate the affective nature of autobiographical memories and the conditions and mechanisms leading to transfer of this affect to ad and brand judgments. They find that when ads encourage the retrieval of autobiographical memories there is a higher level of felt affect and reduced processing of product attributes. Furthermore, this...

The authors investigate the affective nature of autobiographical memories and the conditions and mechanisms leading to transfer of this affect to ad and brand judgments. They find that when ads encourage the retrieval of autobiographical memories there is a higher level of felt affect and reduced processing of product attributes. Furthermore, this...

The results of three experiments suggest that consumers' autobiographical memories involving products and product usage experiences are affectively charged. Furthermore, the three experiments demonstrate that the retrieval of autobiographical memories impacts information processing. When autobiographical memories are evoked, there is reduced analys...

Results of both cross-sectional and longitudinal studies of salespeople indicate that more effective and less effective salespeople differ systematically in their knowledge of sales strategies, and to a lesser extent in their knowledge of customer characteristics. For the sales situation examined, more effective salespeople use specific, problem so...

This study examines how young children use perceptual cues in categorizing products. Specifically, we examine the notion that young children use perceptual cues in a more informed fashion than is generally assumed by traditional viewpoints on cognitive development. Data from the three age groups—four- and five-year-olds, six- and seven-year-olds, a...

Three experiments test the hypothesis that positive mood facilitates cognitive flexibility in categorization. Study 1 used a sorting task and found that positive mood subjects in relation to subjects in other mood states, formed fewer (broader) categories when focusing on similarities among exemplars and more (narrower) categories when focusing on...

This article examines the bases children of different ages use to categorize products. Data from children ages 4 to 10 indicate that the use of perceptual attributes as a basis for categorizing products decreases with age, whereas the use of underlying attributes to categorize products increases with age. These findings provide a conceptual replica...

Results of four studies demonstrate that perceptions of how different a brand is from other brands in the product category affect perceptions of the brand's position within the category. Specifically, perceptions that a brand is strongly discrepant result in a subtyped (or niche) position, whereas perceptions that a brand is moderately discrepant r...

A study of salespeople working for a telephone marketing operation indicates that more effective (above average) salespeople have richer and more interrelated knowledge structures about their customers than do less effective (below average) salespeople in terms of both customer traits and strategies for selling to the customers. No significant diff...

A study of salespeople working for a telephone marketing operation indicates that more effective (above average) salespeople have richer and more interrelated knowledge structures about their customers than do less effective (below average) salespeople in terms of both customer traits and strategies for selling to the customers. No significant diff...

The study finds that framing, i.e., priming different decision criteria, influences evaluation outcomes for both expert and novice consumers when the alternatives are noncomparable and influences evaluation outcomes for novices when the alternatives are comparable. The ready availability of a decision criterion, as opposed to the lack of one, also...

A categorization approach to inference making was used to determine when the effects of comparative advertising would differ from those of noncomparative advertising. Comparative advertising led to different responses for experts relative to either product class or product type level noncomparative advertising, but for novices only when the noncomp...

The study findings suggest that prior expectations about salespeople affect how consumers process information in a selling situation. When the salesperson is seen as typical, product evaluations are unaffected by the quality of the product arguments cited. Thought listing and recall data provide additional support for the notion that analytical pro...

The authors propose that adaptive selling is influenced by salespeople's knowledge of customer types and sales strategies as well as their motivation to alter the direction of their behavior. Pertinent research in psychology and personal selling is reviewed and specific propositions relating to knowledge, motivation, and adaptive behavior are advan...

The authors propose that adaptive selling is influenced by salespeople's knowledge of customer types and sales strategies as well as their motivation to alter the direction of their behavior. Pertinent research in psychology and personal selling is reviewed and specific propositions relating to knowledge, motivation, and adaptive behavior are advan...

This study suggests that category-based evaluative responses supplement the piecemeal-based evaluation processes more often studied in Consumer Research. The alternative modes of processing were found to be contingent upon the match/mismatch of information to category expectations. Compared to piecemeal (mismatch) processing, category-based (match)...