Richard E. Plank

• PhD Marketing
• Professor at University of South Florida

Coaching is the most common intervention tool used by sales managers to develop their salespeople, and the ability to effectively coach others is often what makes a sales manager successful. While sales organizations recognize the importance and positive impact of sales coaching, the unfortunate reality is that most sales managers still lack the pr...

This article analyzes empirical research in which the sales manager is the unit of analysis to determine what knowledge has been generated by sales scholars about sales managers and sales management practice. It examines what we have learned from sales managers about their jobs and themselves with particular emphasis on the managerial relevance of...

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to understand what sales management practices (SMPs) are being used by managers in the current market place, changes over time, insights that can be gained and future research needs. Design/methodology/approach Data for this paper were collected via a cross-sectional internet-based survey using a sampling fra...

Purpose The purpose of this study is to explore the linkages among emotional intelligence, relational selling behavior and salesperson performance. Although existing research acknowledges the importance of emotional facets in business relationships, the role of emotional intelligence is poorly understood in the literature on salesperson performance...

Purpose The purpose of this research is to develop a taxonomy of the impact of sales process regulations, guidance statements and laws (henceforth, referred to as “regulations”) on sales behaviours within the pharmaceutical industry, particularly as it relates to those within the USA. Design/methodology/approach Given the large number of regulat...

Process mapping is a procedure that involves tracing and describing a particular process of interest to the user. The actual process mapping activity can look at communication flows, physical movement, flow of work activities or any number of sets of sequences in some continuous activity. The general purpose of such an activity is to determine wher...

In a recent article Wind and West (1991) argued for the reinvention of the corporation. The corporation of the future would be as follows: 1. integrated and cross-functional 2. flatter and empowered 3. vision-directed 4. global 5. networked 6. information technology based 7. customer-driven 8. stakeholder focused 9. value added quality oriented 10....

This exploratory study takes a “uses and gratifications” approach to studying the ways in wh1ch on-line media function as information sources for college students. Based on a survey of 204 students, the study yields insights into the motivations driving Internet usage among a college population and examines gender and cultural differences in the sa...

The CETSCALE, a 17-item measure of ethnocentrism, was subjected to a validation test in the Armenian language using a 276 respondent data set collected in Soviet Armenia. Confirmatory factor analysis indicated that the 17-item single factor model found by Shimp and Sharma (1987) does not fit the Soviet Armenian sample response pattern. However, a r...

There has been a minimum level of research in personal inducements, a set of sales promotional techniques used in business-to-business marketing. Following a brief review of previous research, this paper describes the current thoughts and behaviors of national sales managers in various businesses with regards to personal inducements. The pervasiven...

Virtually nothing seems to be known about the readership of the business press by international managers. This paper reports on a business press readership study of international managers working in the State of Connecticut. The study sought to determine what they read and what their information requirements were with regard to their international...

This study sought to examine differences in vendor selection attributes within a context, the wholesale neat industry, not previously examined. Purchasing, in this industry, is done by agents and traders, who have different objectives and would thus be expected to value attributes differently. Nine attributes taken from other studies, but modified...

A fundamental objective of marketing principles textbooks is to disseminate the language of the discipline. This paper reports on a content analysis of 15 typical uncfaer-graduate principles of marketing books to ascertain what terms and concepts constitute the lexicon of marketing. The results are revealing as it is patent that there is little con...

Several purported normative models of industrial market segmentation have been developed. International market segmentation has been approached in terms of clustering eligible countries, but has not specifically addressed the problems of industrial marketers. This paper not only suggests a conceptualization incorporating the problem of internationa...

This article represents the first step in the development of a useful model of sales competencies for business-to-business services salespeople. Using a multifaceted research design and four distinct sets of experts in services selling, a listing of necessary competencies is developed and empirically tested to provide a sense of the importance towa...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to outline the usage of interactive marketing tools in the area of sales and operations planning (S&OP) to further collaboration among supply chain partners. Emergent challenges and research directions are proposed. Design/methodology/approach – Using extant literature from S&OP, supply chain management and i...

Measures of trust in the selling literature have usually relied on general measures of trust developed from other contexts which then may have been modified to fit the sales or sales management context. In this paper, trust is conceptualized specifically within a business-to-business sales context as containing three correlated components: salesper...

Attempts to understand and improve salesperson performance have generated a considerable amount of research. Much of this research has focused on the relationships and impacts of various personal, organizational, and environmental variables on sales performance. The predominant model underlying much, if not most, of this research since 1979 has bee...

This paper reports on an experiment, conducted in a retail computer store, that assesses one aspect of the success of point-of-purchase activities developed from the perspective of learning theory. Department store shoppers were recruited to participate in a study disguised as an adult computer learning application and asked to take part in one of...

Creating long-lasting business partnerships between buyers and sellers continues to be a major concern of marketing managers and scholars. The impact of salesperson personal relationship and consultative task behaviors on buyer perceptions, however, has not been thoroughly explored. In response, this study investigates the connection between sales...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to describe the state of logistics performance measurement in corporations based in the USA. Design/methodology/approach – A triangulation approach is used, including, a Delphi study involving more than 100 practitioners, academics, and consultants identified as logistics experts; personal interviews conducted...

The study examines the factors that influence the perceptions of consumers engaged in the consumption of news online. Measures of online communications effectiveness in the business sector are applied to the online news environment. Consumer reactions to two major cable news Web sites provide insight into the relationship between Web site credibili...

The success of business-to-business relationships between sales representatives and buyers depends on many factors. Past literature has indicated that the credibility (trust and expertise) attributed to the sales representative and the sales representative’s firm may significantly affect a number of variables related to this relationship. Little re...

Purpose. The purpose of this paper is to report empirical research that examined the impact of conflict in two different buyer-seller situations, an ongoing relationship and a choice situation where the buyer had to choose between two or more alternative suppliers. Conflict was defined as social conflict and has two distinct types, affective and co...

This study examines the impact of perceived social conflict on existing buyer–seller relationships. The results indicate that as the level of social conflict increases, perceptions about the loyalty of the relationship decrease. Perceived importance of the relationship had no impact on conflict or relationship loyalty. Ramifications of these findin...

Much has been written about the changing competitive structures often caused by the advent of new technology or the entry of nontraditional competitors into the market. These new realities suggest a changing perspective on what constitutes competitive strategy, including a view arguing that competitive differential advantage is not sustainable and...

Partnerships between industrial buyers and industrial sellers are becoming more common in the United States. However, evidence suggests that many of these relationships do not reach their full potential because of actions taken or not taken by the partners. While some partnerships are doomed to failure from the beginning, many fail because the part...

Barter is a well-known phenomenon when used in the countertrade process. However, a review of both the academic and business-oriented purchasing literature reveals that very little has been written on the use of barter in domestic purchasing situations. Given increasing pressures to contain costs, purchasing personnel need to be creative and find n...

Dieser Artikel ermittelt die Wertvorstellungen mit Hintergrund einiger moralischer Überlegungen bei Entscheidungen des Lieferantenmanagement. Sieben Wertvorstellungen wurden an fünf Vorgängen untersucht, in denen Teilnehmer an der Studie Entscheidungen fällten und ihre Grande beschrieben. Die Studie ergab, daβ die Teilnehmer, überwiegend angestellt...

Social conflict is endemic to all human activity. In this study, we examine how conflict, as perceived by professional buyers, impacts their ongoing relationships with current suppliers as well as its effect on developing new supplier relations. The results indicate that affective (personality) conflict between the parties has a negative impact on...

Purpose The significant increase in service offerings throughout the world has caused marketing scholars to focus their attention on the characteristics of the service encounter. With the growth in global business, more attention is also being paid to cross‐culture service encounters. This study proposes adding to that trend by attempting to measur...

The study reported perceived sales interaction conflict (PSIC) as a construct in need of evaluation. As a first step toward validation of a PSIC measure, the study draws perceptual data from a sample of professional industrial buyers. The researchers provide evidence as to the dimensionality of PSIC and its relationship to other variables character...

SUMMARY While differences between male and female salespeople are well documented in the literature, evidence is less clear whether these differences matter to the buyer or whether buyers of different gender make decisions differently. The article reports results of a survey of male and female purchasers on the behaviors, trust, credibility and cus...

Universities have obligations to fulfill the needs of two customers –students and industry. Students must be intellectually prepared to meet the challenges of a highly competitive global environment. One approach in meeting this challenge is to focus on `Service Quality.' The purpose of this paper is to review the relevant research literature and t...

Foreign visitors are such important contributors to the American economy that tourism officials are working hard to reassure them that the U.S. is still a safe place to visit. The significant increase in foreign visitors over the past decade caused U.S. scholars to pay more attention to the unique challenges of cross-cultural service encounters. Th...

This commentary applauds the efforts made by Professor Backhaus and his colleagues in their review of current textbooks utilized to teach business-to-business marketing. It then discusses the notion of education as a process and attempts to stimulate thinking on the how business marketing academics can improve our educational efforts by applying co...

The notion of value and the principles and methods that buyers use to discover which supplier offering has more value needs to drive all business marketing activity. However, the concept of value and how to measure it is somewhat vague. The authors present a simple way to think about value. The research reports an exploratory empirical study of how...

This research examines organizational purchasing models focusing on the use of total cost of ownership (TCO) to value purchase opportunities. The research presents evidence that leading-edge companies actually use such models. This exploratory study provides, for the first time, data on the nature, and use, of the cost drivers on which organization...

This research addresses the impact of purchase situation on sales communication behaviors used by the salesperson in business markets. It is hypothesized that different sets of sales communication behaviors will be needed and vary for different purchasing situations. Measures of a salesperson's communication behaviors were tested for different type...

This research reports an independent assessment of a recently developed set of consumer-based brand equity measures. Yoo and Donthu (1997) developed a multidimensional, consumer-based brand equity scale comprised of four theoretically defined constructs and a separate multiple-item overall brand equity measure. The present research employed slightl...

The modified Consumer Ethnocentric Tendencies Scale (CETSCALE), a 10-item measure of consumer ethnocentrism, was subjected to a validation test in the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland. Confirmatory factor analysis in each of these nations revealed that the 10-item single factor model suggested by Shimp and Sharma (Journal of Consumer Research 24...

In this article the authors respond to the commentaries by Professors Spekman, Wilson, and Woodside on their article, “Business Marketing: A Twenty Year Review” and share their thoughts on the future of business marketing. In responding to the commentaries, the authors concede that while their review has started the dialogue, much remains to be don...

Since 1978 business marketing has seen a great deal of research activity. It is reasonable to ask whether this has led to advances in theory development and a general increase in our level of knowledge of business marketing. This article reviews the business marketing literature from 1978–1997 from twenty-three journals, five sets of proceedings, a...

This paper presents a model of brand equity for business markets. It is argued that the potential benefits of branding and brand equity development have been neglected in business markets and that a general model and stream of relevant empirical research could be useful to managers in business markets depending on the situational nature of their ma...

Perceptions of the quality of higher education are thought to have considerable impact on the decision making process to attend higher education institutions. High school guidance counselors are known to be influencers of higher education attendance through their work with high school students in the selection process. This paper reports an explora...

The six volumes of Advances in Business Marketing and Purchasing have provided the field of business marketing with a rich legacy of research theory and findings. This article provides a summary review of the two major themes found in the series related to research, contribution to theoretical development, and contribution to practice. A total of 2...

This paper concerns the development of a short measure of perceived empathy. Developed in the context of research on sales performance, the scale provided indicators for perceived empathy as both a cognitive as well as an affective construct. While not being able to differentiate cleanly between affective and cognitive empathy, the resulting single...

Following a methodology similar to the one used in Cooper's NewProd studies, this study examines the impact of technical risk on the ability to predict new product success in high technology business markets. Cooper's original 48 new product characteristics along with 10 new items measuring technical risk are used in examining 406 actual industrial...

Numerous computerized repertory grid programs are available to researchers and clinicians. However, these programs operate in a DOS environment, and many are cumber some to use. This article introduces the first Windows-based repertory grid program, making the analysis of repertory grids easier and thus more useful for researchers and practitioners...

Proposes an alternative approach to understanding personal selling performance based on personal construct psychology, a cognitively based personality paradigm, originally formulated in clinical psychology by George Kelly. Explains how personal construct psychology theory (PCT), which reflects a constructivist epistemology, provides a conceptual fr...

The primary purpose of this study was to assess the ethics of purchasing management professionals. A multidimensional scale of ethics was used to measure their predispositions to act morally. The ethics measure from this scale was correlated to a series of ethical vignettes specific to the purchasing function to further assess the value of the scal...

This article describes a research project that investigated the relationship between the purchasing decision process occurring within a firm and intrinsic factors relating to the product. The study determined the effects of product complexity on the procurement process and identified those dimensions of complexity to which participating departments...

This research confirmed the presence of a positive relationship between buyer decision framing and supplier choice. This research also confirmed that there is a positive relationship between career stages and buyer decision framing but was unable to support past research claims that there is a significant positive relationship between presentation...

This paper concerns the psychometric properties of the shortened and revised version of the Family Environment Scale, used in the context of research on consumers' purchase behavior. It examines the scale from a face validity perspective as well as the psychometric properties. The response format is revised from a dichotomous to a four-point balanc...

Research sponsored by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation has reaffirmed the presence of the so-called “NIMBY” or not-in-my-backyard attitude toward the placement of a variety of public facilities including those concerned with the maintenance and improvement of mental health. This finding is indicative of the general larger problem of the stigma of...

Personal inducements, a set of techniques normally used by salespeople, are a heavily used, but little researched phe- nomenon. Following a review of research activity, this paper pro- vides a set of guidelines and suggestions for managing the use of these techniques.

This research examined the current use of computers by purchasing departments and identifies trends that will affect the interaction of business marketers with those purchasing departments. It was found that extensive advances have been made in computer use by purchasing personnel and trends toward more sophisticated usage are obvious. These change...

Despite the growing interest in direct marketing, little has been written regarding alternative message strategies within the context of direct mail presentations. The general purpose of the present research is to investigate the effectiveness of three alternative message structures used by a marketer of a business service in a direct mail campaign...

This exploratory study, using a sample of purchasing personnel from the state of Massachusetts, addresses the issue of the use and the development of approved supplier lists. It examines the types of products that are the subject of approved supplier lists, who participates in list specification, and the communication patterns evident during the pr...

Discusses artificial intelligence, particularly expert or knowledge systems, and its relevance for business-to-business marketing and marketing decision support systems. Enables the reader to understand the basic concepts of expert systems while providing more technical references, before discussing current and potential applications for decision s...

The wellness movement is but one recent change affected by groups of consumers regarding their health care. The concept has not only precipitated academic inquiry, but is clearly becoming a force in the health care field. This paper examines two new concepts, health consiousness and scientific health orientation as they relate to attitudes and beha...

Personal computer technology has provided a major opportunity to develop revolutionary approaches to the solution of business problems. While applications of artificial intelligence and expert systems are rapidly emerging, few have been developed in the sales management area. Specifically, this paper proposes the creation of an expert system to enh...

This article reviews approximately 30 articles over the past 20 years that have addressed the topic of industrial market segmentation. The pursuit of a normative model to guide practitioners in segmenting industrial markets has made some progress with three identifiable models. There are a host of problems with the work done in the area both concep...

A study of industrial marketing practitioner perspectives on industrial marketing education was conducted. Attitudes toward the educational process, definition of skills, continuing education, practitioner assistance in education and topic importance were queried. In general it was found that practitioners are favorably disposed toward industrial m...

There has been extremely little previous research done on the use of personal inducements as a form of sales promotion in industrial marketing. An exploratory study was conducted in this area and the results are reported in this article. Buyers' attitudes about inducements and vendors' use of inducements were measured. Profiles of relatively more r...

Salespersons selling to organizations operate in a more complex environment than is typically portrayed in the literature. The scope of models developed in the sales process area has been limited to simple persuasion situations. This article goes beyond traditional sales models by taking into account interactions by various members of the organizat...

A major goal at the University of South Florida Polytechnic (USFP) is to link both students and faculty directly with innovation and innovative organizations. One methodology being utilized is the creation of several incubators which are traditional in the sense that they seek to grow start-up companies, but nontraditional in the sense that major e...

Typescript. Thesis (Ph. D.)--City University of New York, 1988. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 382-391). Photocopy.