Nwamaka A. Anaza

• Doctor of Philosophy
• Southern Illinois University Carbondale

Purpose: Feeling connected and engaged at work plays a critical role in the mental well-being of employees. Creating an environment where employees experience positive emotions, feel cared for, and have opportunities for meaningful interactions is essential for fostering healthy relationships within the organization. This research demonstrates that...

Why do consumers invest in cryptocurrency despite its sharp increases and decreases in value? While it seems rational that such volatility should increase consumers' fear of investment, we posit that the fear of missing out (FOMO) on the possible positive returns negates such. Further, this study explores the impact that consumers personality trait...

Despite growing interest in business-to-business branding, there is limited understanding of how B2B brands impact organizational buying decisions in fast-emerging African markets. To address this omission, this study attempts to investigate the role and significance of B2B supplier brands in emerging African economies. Using a qualitative inquiry,...

Purpose Prior research has indicated that narratives may lead to fantasy which may evoke narrative transportation. Researchers have also established that narrative transportation affects persuasion, changes in attitudes and brand evaluations. To this end, several studies have focused on narrative consumption (i.e. being hooked into a narrative) and...

While cash will eventually become a thing of the past, marketing researchers have given little attention to the rise of cashless markets and the obstacles and opportunities they present. In fact, research that addresses the strategic approach to planning, coordinating, and executing the cashless adoption and experience for consumers is scant. To st...

Evolving financial behavior, an unpredictable public policy atmosphere, and an unparalleled global pandemic have collaborated to disrupt nonprofit fundraising. The COVID‐19 pandemic alone exacerbated consumer demands for nonprofit services while curtailing nonprofit organizations’ ability to fundraise. Without fundraising, nonprofit organizations c...

Purpose Drawing on the organizational buying decision-making framework, the purpose of this study is to investigate how sales orientation (SOCO) affects buyers’ conflict, salesperson-owned loyalty and buyers’ propensity to end a supply relationship when selling firms use a single versus multiple salesforce go-to-market strategy. Design/methodology...

Industrial salespeople spend more time outside of the firm than inside of the firm. As a consequence, they may be particularly prone to salesperson social isolation - or feelings of being disconnected from coworkers and colleagues. Potentially magnified by the 2019 coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, the prevalence of social isolation may become a mor...

Research suggests that customer-brand disidentification is a pertinent source for the breakdown of consumer-brand relationships and a reason why consumers turn against brands. However, practical and theoretical interest in the study of customer-brand disidentification has been hindered by the absence of a reliable scale with confirmed predictive va...

This paper investigates if celebrity endorsement offsets the negative effect low prices have on quality perceptions. This research highlights the interactive effect between celebrity endorsement and pricing on purchases (Study 1) and shows that celebrity endorsers’ level of expertise improves perceptions of low-priced offerings and increase purchas...

Purpose Organizations can benefit significantly from the growing capabilities of the internet. As the Web facilitates purchasing and reduces the costs of marketing, companies can connect with customers through the use of storytelling. This study aims to examine how small businesses leverage the use of storytelling to engage with customers and drive...

The subscription box e-commerce industry has experienced tremendous growth over the last five years. Given the growing size of the industry, this business model warrants direction for firms currently offering subscription services as well as companies considering entering this industry. This paper presents a detailed overview of the subscription bo...

Purpose Salespeople frequently face the predicament of wanting to protect their market knowledge from coworkers while not appearing recalcitrant. Considering the choice of disclosing information or refusing to disclose, they may choose a third option: appearing to share knowledge while concealing substantive information, which this study calls evas...

Salespeople often face the dilemma of having to protect their personally acquired market knowledge from others in their organization, while also seeming to be a team player. In order to not being perceived as being opportunistic by their colleagues, salespeople have the option of: (1) sharing their information, or (2) neglecting to divulge their kn...

Our special session combines four papers that offer fresh, new, directions in business-to-business (B2B) research. Our first paper, “Emotions in B2B Multi-Million Dollars Sales Proposals: A Qualitative Examination of the Buying Process in Large Value Key Account Sales,” focuses on the B2B buying process with large value, key accounts. The authors,...

Purpose Researchers and practitioners have traditionally maintained that organizational buying requires rational decision-making. However, individuals at organizations make decisions daily applying a confluence of rationalizations and emotions. This study aims to address the roles of personal feelings, facts and emotional advertising content in the...

The Coronavirus pandemic has caused millions of Americans to work remotely. Most of these workers are doing so with little, if any, training. To help, several pieces have been published (or republished) about how to work from home. However, what is missing in each of these is that working from home during the pandemic is not like anything we have d...

Purpose This study aims to advance the organizational buying literature, by examining buyer burnout and its consequences. Specifically, the sequencing of multi-faceted organizational buyer burnout is established and the impact of each dimension on job satisfaction, job performance, affective organizational commitment and turnover intentions is acce...

Physical attractiveness has been described as a “beauty premium.” Research shows that for leaders, attractiveness is associated with both personal and professional benefits. However, sales research has yet to investigate manager attractiveness. Here, we examine whether and how manager physical attractiveness influences salespeople's perceptions of...

Purpose-Drawing on the fairness theory, this paper aims to propose a conceptual framework that investigates how co-creation in the failed service delivery (coproduction intensity) and co-creation in the service recovery affect customers' evaluation of the firm's competence, justice and ethicalness, and ultimately their willingness to co-create in t...

Purpose Drawing on the fairness theory, this paper aims to propose a conceptual framework that investigates how co-creation in the failed service delivery (coproduction intensity) and co-creation in the service recovery affect customers’ evaluation of the firm’s competence, justice and ethicalness, and ultimately their willingness to co-create in t...

Purpose – In order to provide a keener understanding of consumers’ decision-making processes and motivations regarding deliberate counterfeit consumption, this paper integrates insights from several theoretical perspectives and the relevant literature. It proposes an overlooked yet important goal-directed interactionist perspective, and identifies...

This research examines whether it is important if salespeople like their manager. Little is known about the outcomes of manager likeability as perceived by the salesperson. This study introduces manager likeability and investigates its impact on salesperson performance. Drawing on interpersonal attraction and relational identification theory, we sh...

This research investigates stories about buyer-seller experiences in B2B advertising. In two studies, the authors explore the impact of stories and narrative transportation in advertising on decision makers’ attitudinal responses. In Study 1, findings from a Fortune 100 company's buyer panel indicate that stories told using narrative advertising we...

As virtual sales teams grow and as salespeople continue to work remote, the notion of workplace isolation, or the extent of separation from others, will prevail. As organizations continue to locate their salespeople closer to their customers, perceptions of being disconnected from others in the organization and feelings of loneliness will inadverte...

Purpose Marketing researchers currently lack a systematic and empirical understanding of digital social viewing strategies. Drawing on social impact theory, this study aims to investigate if and how firm-initiated digital social viewing strategies (livestreaming vs pre-recorded) influence consumer viewing experiences and consequential behavioral in...

Purpose Crowding in service environments is a constant concern for many firms due to the negative consequences it has on consumers and companies alike. Yet, scant empirical research exists on firm-generated initiatives aimed at improving customer service experiences in crowded situations. The purpose of this paper is to investigate how information,...

Past academic research addressing storytelling has mainly been approached from the business-to-consumer (B2C) context. These studies have credited stories as a fundamental source for emotional buying behavior in consumers. Although storytelling has the ability to evoke greater emotions in consumers, marketing research has not examined its applicati...

The credibility of a sales manager in the eyes of the salesperson is a key component of leadership effectiveness (Bass and Bass 2009; Bettinghaus and Baseheart 1969; Malshe 2010). The authors describe how salespeople form judgements about their managers’ credibility based on an emotional connection driven by their managers’ physical features (Busen...

Efforts are being made to examine how the arts help people reach their full potential and contribute to subjective well-being. The purpose of this research is to examine the relationship between artistic consumption and consumer well-being. Specifically, consumer motives, represented as emotion regulation, and arts engagement are examined to assess...

Purpose This study explores salesperson empathy and the moderating impact of positive/negative affect on a salesperson’s listening and adaptive selling behaviors. It also seeks to identify whether and how empathy influences performance. Design/methodology/approach The study’s hypotheses was analyzed using data collected from business-to-business...

Purpose Organizational buying behavior has often been treated as a rational activity even though humans are involved in the decision making. Human decision making often includes a complex cadre of emotions and rationalizations. Subsequently, organizational buyers may not only be driven by logic, testing, and facts, but also by emotions. This resea...

Purpose Using firm-level data from small- to micro-sized agro-based enterprises located in developing Africa, the purpose of this paper is to employ a resource-based marketing model to explain financial and nonfinancial organizational performance outcomes. The moderating effect of firm size on the structural inter-linkages between customer retenti...

Salespeople feel connected to their coworkers when they know they can depend on and talk with one another. Employing social exchange theory, this study investigates the impact of connectedness on salesperson performance. Specifically, the paper reveals the processes by which this relationship occurs, and the conditionality of the process itself. In...

Many contend that withholding and hoarding makes very little sense in sales organizations that applaud knowledge sharing. Others call knowledge withholding and hoarding an obsolete concept in today's search engine age. Despite this, knowledge withholding remains a systematic and intrinsic sales issue in business-to-business (B2B) firms, for which a...

Purpose Frontline employees face constant emotional demands in the course of providing services to their customers, which can impact job engagement. This study aims to investigate the influence of emotional labor (surface and deep acting) and job resources (having a mentor and availability of expressive emotional network resources) on employees’ cu...

Recently, more social organizations are engaging in market transactions to achieve financial self-reliance. In today’s highly competitive market, it is imperative for such social ventures to bolster long-term support from their consumers through every possible point of access, such as social media. Given the importance of social media in enhancing...

To identify or not to identify! This study addresses this issue as it relates to service firms, one’s profession and workgroup from the perspective of immigrant workers in the USA.

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine a model of employee-customer identification (ECID) using two samples: nurses and cooperative extension frontline employees. The model posits that person-organization fit, person-job fit, and organizational identification are positively related to ECID. Design/methodology/approach – A recursive path...

Purpose – The purpose of this study is to examine the relationship between ethical climate and facets of job satisfaction among organizational buyers. Design/methodology/approach – This research is an empirical study. Data are collected from the industrial buyers using online panel. The INDSALES scale, the scale developed to measure job satisfacti...

This study investigates the relationship between personality traits, shopper satisfaction and customer citizenship behaviors in an online shopping environment. Results suggest that e-shoppers with the personality trait of agreeableness are more likely to respond positively to an e-shopping experience. E-shopper extraversion was also found to contri...

The emergence of social media creates new opportunities for social ventures to foster consumer-social venture (C-SV) identification. Despite the great potential of social media to facilitate social interaction, research is limited regarding social media's effectiveness in developing consumer identification. The study posits that C-SV identification...

This article presents a framework for exploring salesperson(s) resistance to sharing market intelligence in emerging markets in Sub-Saharan Africa. The authors propose that resistance to sharing market intelligence with relevant others, including the firm, coworkers, intermediaries, and sales managers, is a function of various individual, leadershi...

With the growing popularity of social media as a tool for marketing social causes and the increasing significance of social ventures in today's market economy, it is important to understand the heterogeneous nature of social venture consumers in regard to their social media usage. Using cluster analysis of survey responses from 305 consumers of var...

This study examines how a buyer's level of economic satisfaction, relational duration and communication alignment frequency with a selling firm impacts a buyer's level of conflict with the firm. Further, this paper explores buyer's gender as a moderator between the above hypothesized relationships.

Purpose – This study aims to examine the satisfaction-loyalty framework on word-of-mouth communications (WOMC) and share-of-purchases in situations where business-to-business (b-t-b) buyers have a relationship with both the salesperson and the selling firm. Design/methodology/approach – This study uses an online panel to examine respondents with b...

This study examines the psychological process used in predicting customer citizenship behaviors. Hypotheses are proposed to test the effects of personality traits on customer satisfaction, and customer citizenship behaviors in an online shopping context. Two broader elemental traits—agreeableness and extraversion—are posited to lead to specific sta...

Purpose – In the marketing and consumer behavior literature, much remains to be explained about customer citizenship behavior in a highly technological e-retailing context. The purpose of this paper is to present the results of a survey of 186 e-shoppers which was conducted grounded in the social exchange theory. Design/methodology/approach – Stru...

Purpose ‐ The purpose of this paper is to examine the impact of organizational and employee-customer identification on job engagement. The paper also aims to explore the role of customer orientation in the model as a consequence of identification, in addition to an antecedent of engagement. Design/methodology/approach ‐ This study utilizes an onlin...

Purpose In an overwhelming portion of the US service economy, the multifaceted responsibilities that frontline employees play as patrons have been overlooked within the academic literature. The notion of employees as customers is a common business practice that garners sizeable benefits to both the firm and its employees; unfortunately, research on...

The authors examined the direct and indirect impact of empowerment on service quality as perceived by Extension staff. Using a sample 283 respondents, the results revealed that along with empowerment, constructs such as job satisfaction and organizational identification positively affected service quality. Undoubtedly, each of these variables contr...

Research on gender differences within buyer—selling firm relationships is lacking, particularly with respect to exchanges that detail the role of ongoing relationships, communication frequency alignment, and economic satisfaction on conflict. This study examines a model assessing the effects of buyer economic satisfaction, relational duration, and...

Research on gender differences within buyer-selling firm relationships is lacking, particularly with respect to exchanges that detail the role of ongoing relationships, communication frequency alignment, and economic satisfaction on conflict. This study examines a model assessing the effects of buyer economic satisfaction, relational duration, and...

Answering the call for research on sales force interactions with channel-of-distribution members, this study examines buyers’ relationships with both salespeople and suppliers within a multisource procurement setting. Using 171 respondents, buyers’ perceptions of commitment, satisfaction, and commitment are examined. Findings suggest that buyers de...

A central focus within consumer behavior has been the study of customer satisfaction. With a constantly changing economy, customer satisfaction has been accepted as the backbone of business sustainability and remains one of the most studied constructs in marketing. Despite its importance, researchers have demonstrated that the current study of cust...