Sergio Román

• Professor
• Professor (Full) at University of Murcia

This research examines the effect of nonnormal data on several frequently utilized statistical models. Behavioral scholars often encounter nonnormal and potentially problematic data such as outliers. In the absence of clear guidance, scholars generally report taking some compensatory action, including the deletion of data, data transformations, or...

Parents' concerns about baby food safety are growing, particularly because infants are more vulnerable to food contaminants than adults. Recent evidence revealing high levels of substances like arsenic and lead in baby foods call for a thorough exploration of contaminants in various infant diets. The objective of this article is to compare the leve...

This study examined and compared the nutritional quality and degree of naturalness between baby biscuits (<3 years), children biscuits (>3 years), and adult biscuits. Mintel's Global New Products Database was searched for “Baby Biscuits & Rusks” and “Sweet Biscuits/Cookies” (re)launched between July 2019 and July 2022 in four European countries (Ge...

This research examined several antecedents (consumers’ brand identification and skepticism) and consequences (brand reputation, purchase intentions and trust of the review site) of perceived credibility of exaggerated positive online consumer reviews. Results from a sample of 1,201 consumers showed that these reviews can be perceived as authentic (...

Background Processed foods, and particularly “ultra-processed foods” (UPFs), as categorized by NOVA (Monteiro et al., 2016), have been highly criticized over the last few years. At the same time, consumers consistently perceive processed foods as less healthy and less natural than unprocessed foods. Scope and approach This commentary aimed to exam...

There is an urgent need to reduce sugar intake in early childhood. Commercial infant cereals are among the first solid foods introduced to infants at the beginning of the complementary feeding period in most countries. The aim of this study was to examine infants’ overall acceptability of low-sugar complementary cereals. To do so, a between-subject...

Consumer demand of commercial baby food packaged in squeezable pouches has increased in the last few years. However, pouches have been criticized for having excessive levels of sugar and too many processed ingredients. This study examined how reformulations towards healthier (lower sugar levels) and more natural (fewer processed ingredients) produc...

The change in consumers' lifestyle promoted "snackification" favouring the commercialisation of on-the-go products such as cereal bars (CBs). Manufacturers are encountering challenges to develop healthy, natural, tasty, and affordable CBs. This article focuses on production methods, the current and emerging market trends, and practical implications...

Factor analysis is an extremely popular model for scale development prior to other modeling in much research in business and the social sciences. A central question in factor analysis remains the determination of the number of factors to extract and retain to explain as much of the data as possible, and do so parsimoniously. Parallel analysis can b...

The main aim of the current study was to examine and compare the nutritional quality and degree of naturalness of chocolate and cereal bars. Our analysis relied on a dataset (n = 100) of the most consumed chocolate and cereal bars in Germany in 2019. The Nutri-Score and the Food Naturalness Index were calculated to measure nutritional quality and n...

Many consumer research and social science journals are increasingly urging behavioral researchers to submit effect sizes among their reported results. Yet most researchers are less familiar with effect sizes than with significance tests, even in choosing among them. This article clarifies the concepts, formulae, and appropriate usage of the “varian...

This study examines the moderating role of price inequalities in the antecedents and consequences of perceived price unfairness. We test a moderated mediation model on a sample of 994 consumers exposed to a hotel booking scenario either with an advantaged price (n = 496) or a disadvantaged one (n = 498). Our results show that the mechanisms through...

This research examines the personality, cognitive and emotional antecedents of deceptive price perceptions that occur in price inequalities. We draw on appraisal theories to examine the extent to which these relationships are different depending on two situations: consumers who are exposed to an advantaged situation (lower price) and those exposed...

Purpose Companies are increasingly aware of the importance of delivering economic, social and environmental benefits through sustainable innovation. This study aims to examine how companies manage tensions derived from sustainable innovation and identify internal and external factors that facilitate its successful implementation in the food industr...

Complementary feeding (CF) is an important determinant of early and later life nutrition with great implications for the health status and the development of an adequate growth. Parents can choose between homemade foods (HMFs) and/or commercial infant foods (CIFs). There is no consistent evidence as to whether HMFs provide a better nutritional prof...

The introduction of complementary foods is a crucial stage in the development and determination of infants' health status in both the short and longer-term. This study describes complementary feeding practices among infants and toddlers in Spain. Also, relationships among sample characteristics (both parents and their child), feeding practices (tim...

In this chapter, we introduce a new construct we call “Perceived Deception in Online Consumer Reviews” (PDOCR). Online reviews of products are very important to companies and customers, yet they are vulnerable to unethical representations. Even regardless of whether a deceptive review has been posted or not, we take the position that it is importan...

Background: Consumers are increasingly demanding transparency in food labeling as they want more and better information about what they are eating and where their food comes from. This seems to be particularly the case for food naturalness. Several food indexes or metrics have been developed in the last decades to objectively measure various aspect...

This research examines price variations that are perceived to be unfair which then induce consumers to retaliate online. These phenomena are growing in online retailing given the data-based means for companies to set differential pricing, and the social media venues for consumer complaints. In this research, data from 997 respondents are used to te...

Food variety during complementary feeding has been found to promote food acceptability, and improvements towards a balanced diet. This study aimed to describe and compare the food variety of homemade foods (HMFs) and commercial infant foods (CIFs) in infants and young children. Food variety in complementary feeding. Comparison of homemade and comme...

Infant cereals play an important role in the complementary feeding period. The aim of this study was to review existing research about the quantity, type, and degree of infant cereal processing, with a special focus on whole grain infant cereals. Accumulating evidence shows many benefits of whole grain consumption for human health. Likewise, consum...

The present study is based on a teleological framework adapted from complexity sciences (Stacey et al. 2000). The framework has not been applied in a business-to-business (B2B) service setting. The relevance in this context lies in that it considers the dimension of time involved between a service provider and its customers in complex business rela...

Purpose Mobile technologies have become indispensable in sales. However, there is a lack of agreement about whether mobile technology use facilitates the sales job or contributes to the salesperson’s stress and reduced job satisfaction. To address this controversy, this study aims to examine the effect of mobile technology use (smartphones, laptop...

Purpose To examine the actions and interactions that take place before and after purchase between a service provider (service seller) and its customers (service buyers) in complex business relationships. Specifically, it is to examine customers’ expectations of the service provider’s service offer before purchase and the same customers’ perception...

The study of the motives that parents take into account when making commercial infant food choices is important because these choices determine what infants eat. Food given to children during infancy has a major impact on their health, development and growth. This article describes the development and validation of an instrument for capturing paren...

To compare the life-cycles of service sales between buyers and sellers in business relationships by means of teleological approaches: transformative - ad hoc and present-based actions; formative - pre-determined and past-based actions; and rationalist - goal-directed and future-based actions. A quantitative case study approach was applied; based on...

Background Consumers’ perceptions of naturalness are important for the acceptance of foods and food technologies. Thus, several studies have examined the significance of naturalness among consumers. Nonetheless, the aspects that are considered essential in perceiving a food item as natural may vary across consumers and different stakeholder groups....

Unlike other employees in the organization, salespeople work in relatively unsupervised settings, they are often evaluated with short-term performance measures, and are primarily responsible for generating the company’s sales, which can be particularly stressful (Miao and Evans 2013). Salespeople are increasingly under pressure to do more in less t...

This research examines the effects of consumers' perceptions of retailers' deceptive practices on their evaluations of online and offline retailers. Results from two samples of consumers (shopping in online versus offline channels) show the direct and indirect influence of consumers' perceptions of retailers' deceptive practices on consumers' evalu...

Multichannel retailers dominate today’s retail landscape. Practitioners and researchers are particularly interested in understanding how the multichannel strategy helps establishing and developing relationships with customers. Our find- ings, from 302 customers of multichannel financial services firms, show that frontline employees’ customer facili...

Today’s salesperson is pressured to do more in less time, and technological advancements have become an integral part of the personal selling process (Rapp et al. 2008). During the last 30 years researchers from a diverse set of disciplines, such as information systems research, innovation research, social/organizational psychology, and marketing,...

Rapid advancements in information technology (IT) are transforming the way relationships between companies and their customers are managed (Ahearne et al. 2012; Marshall et al. 2012). The increasing investment in IT in marketing and sales organizations has been a major area of investigation in terms of productivity, efficiency, and its ability to f...

This research examines the effects of consumers' perceptions of retailers' deceptive practices on their evaluations of online and offline retailers. Results from two samples of consumers (shopping in online versus offline channels) show the direct and indirect influence of consumers' perceptions of retailers' deceptive practices on consumers' evalu...

Purpose – This paper aims to examine whether and how sales technology (ST) use helps salespeople perform better through the modification of their customer-qualification skills and customer-oriented selling behaviors. Also, the moderating role of salespeople’s technology self-efficacy is analyzed. Technological advancements have become an integral p...

In Spain, most infant cereals (IC) are hydrolysed in order to enhance solubility and avoid lump formation. However, simple sugar (SS) levels depend on the degree of hydrolysis. Several studies suggest that excessive SS supply during the complementary feeding promotes child´s preference for sweet flavours, leading to dental caries, diabetes and/or o...

Infant feeding covers a wide range of practices as breastfeeding (the gold standard), formula feeding (when breastfeeding is not possible), the introduction of solid food and the preparation of infant food amongst others. Some research shows that parental practices such as forcing children to finish their plate/bottle (pressure to eat) can disturb...

Prior research has found attributions to mediate the relationship between the elements of corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities and consumer responses to firms; however, the question of what variables determine consumer attributions of CSR remains partially unaddressed. This article analyzes why consumers make attributions of CSR that ar...

The present study is built on the principles of relationship selling in a context of industrial Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs). The research specifically analyses the influence of customer-oriented selling and ethical sales behaviors on customer satisfaction, trust and loyalty to the seller company. Results, based on a sample of 219 SMEs...

visión íntegra (se incluyen tanto las actividades que debe realizar el vendedor individual, como las que lleva a cabo el director/jefe de ventas para gestionar a su equipo), actualizada (se recogen las últimas tendencias en los temas tratados, con especial hincapié en las nuevas tecnologías y la venta en mercados internacionales) y equilibrada (se...

This article analyzes the relationships among online trust and two of its most important antecedents, namely, privacy and security, and explains how consumers’ characteristics (gender, age, education and extraversion), moderate the influence of both privacy and security in online trust. This study expands previous literature by identifying the cond...

Purpose – The first purpose of this research is to analyze the influence of adaptive selling, as perceived by customers, on customer satisfaction – both with the salesperson and the company – and loyalty to the supplier. In addition, this study aims to examine to what extent the organizational position occupied by the buyer moderates the results ob...

Research has consistently shown that salesperson's active listening behavior leads to strong sales performance. Yet the influence of management policies on listening has received very limited attention, and prior research linking listening to customer retention has led to mixed findings. This study examines how listening is enhanced through control...

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the influence of several consumer characteristics (gender, age, education, agreeableness, conscientiousness and prior online experience) on consumers’ frustration levels with retail website performance in the online shopping process, as well as the impact of frustration on consumers’ positive word of mouth (W...

Consumer distrust is only recently beginning to be perceived as an important e-commerce issue and, unlike online trust, the nature and role of distrust is much less established. This study examines the influence of two important consumer characteristics (ethical ideology and risk aversion) on consumer’s ethically-based distrust of online retailers....

In this article, we examine the role of several consumers’ cognitive and psychographic traits in their perceptions of retailers’ deceptive practices (perceived deception) and the different effects on perceived deception associated with online vis-à-vis in-store shopping. Building on theoretical models of persuasion in consumer behavior, we hypothes...

La insatisfacción del consumidor tras experimentar un fallo en la compra online es el principal motivo de pérdida de clientes en Internet. No obstante, no todos los consumidores reaccionan del mismo modo en estas situaciones. El objetivo del presente trabajo es la identificación de segmentos de consumidores según su distinta satisfacción con las co...

En la literatura de marketing de servicios es conocida la importancia de la interacción entre el personal de primera línea y el cliente. A pesar de esto, son escasas las investigaciones que se centran en las consecuencias del aspecto social de la interacción, y más concretamente, en el trato social dispensado por el empleado. Este trabajo analiza l...

to deliver superior service quality, managers must first understand how consumers perceive and evaluate online customer service. This is especially the case for companies offering intangible products. Therefore, the objective of this research is to develop a scale to measure customer perceived service quality in the context of service sites (e.g. i...

La oportunidad de comportarse de manera no ética (engaños, mentiras, presiones, etc.) y el riesgo de que esto ocurra son mayores en el ámbito comercial que en otras áreas de la empresa. Los comerciales están sujetos a una creciente presión, dado que son los principales responsables de generar ingresos para la organización y su remuneración depende...

With the explosion of the Internet many firms are incorporating technology into their marketing and operations and are adopting a multichannel strategy. The impact of this strategy has been especially high in the services area, which has traditionally relied on close, personal contact between customers and employees. This study explores how overall...

Only a few studies have empirically addressed how the sales manager’s gender influences his/her management activities. The present article examines how the sales manager’s gender as well as his/her formal level of education have an influence on the control, discipline and coaching implemented in the sales team. To this end, a mail survey was sent t...

The present study is built on the principles of relationship selling in a context of industrial Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs). The research specifically analyses the influence of customer-oriented selling and ethical sales behaviors on customer satisfaction, trust and loyalty to the seller company. Results, based on a sample of 219 SMEs...

El objetivo de esta investigación es analizar el uso de los recursos comerciales en las empresas industriales, concretamente se centra en la frecuencia de contacto entre el vendedor personal y sus clientes. Para ello, se recogieron los datos longitudinales durante 2 años de 306 PYMES clientes de un proveedor industrial. Para el desarrollo del exper...

Nowadays organizations need to improve the image of their salespeople since they are aware of the influence of salespeople behaviors on the success or failure of the company as well as the bad image that society has traditionally had about the sales function, due in part to the use of sales ethically questionable practices. This article aims to ana...

El creciente escepticismo con que el consumidor evalúa las actividades de venta es un importante problema que reduce, e incluso puede anular, la efectividad de las estrategias dirigidas a fomentar su confianza y, por ende, su satisfacción e intenciones de lealtad hacia la empresa. Este trabajo aborda el problema de la desconfianza del consumidor co...

Nowadays organizations need to improve the image of their salespeople since they are aware of the influence of salespeople behaviors on the success or failure of the company as well as the bad image that society has traditionally had about the sales function, due in part to the use of sales ethically questionable practices. This article aims to ana...

The growing skepticism which consumer evaluates sales activities implemented by companies is an important problem that reduces, and even eliminate, the effectiveness of strategies designed to build trust and, hence, consumer's satisfaction and loyalty intentions to the company. This paper addresses the problem of consumer distrust by incorporating...

This study investigates the negative influence of consumer’s perceptions of online retailer’s deceptive practices (perceived deception) on consumer’s relational variables (satisfaction and loyalty intentions to the online retailer). Also, the moderating role of product type (goods versus services), consumer’s attitude toward the Internet, and consu...

Personal selling is thought to be a very effective marketing vehicle. The notion of adaptive selling suggests that it should work better than any other means of communication because salespeople are able to develop a unique message for each customer. This research proposes a model of key antecedents and consequences of adaptive selling. In particul...

PurposeThe authors examine the influence of employees’ social regard toward the customers on customer satisfaction, trust, and word of mouth. In addition, we analyzed the moderating role of length of relationship between the service provider and the customer on the effects of social regard on the customer relationship outcomes. Design/Methodology/...

Sales calls are one of the most valuable and expensive resources available to industrial sales managers. The main purpose of this research was to look at the relationship between an increase in sales call frequency and some important outcomes in the buyer–seller relationship. To do so, we adopted a longitudinal research design where data from 357 c...

The current research represents an initial step into the analysis of the effect of self‐esteem, others' (peers and teachers) expectations and family support on academic achievement through learning approaches (deep processing, surface processing and effort). Data were gathered from 553 university students from different faculties of a Spanish unive...

Ethical concerns of Internet users continue to rise. Accordingly, several scholars have called for systematic empirical research to address these issues. This study examines the conceptualization and measurement of consumers’ perceptions regarding the ethics of online retailers (CPEOR). Also, this research represents a first step into the analysis...

Los trabajos previos que han analizado los antecedentes del rendimiento académico de los estudiantes han sido numerosos, pero el debate sobre los antecedentes del rendimiento académico de los alumnos continúa tan candente como siempre. Por lo tanto, se requiere de nuevas investigaciones que profundicen en tales aspectos. En este trabajo se desarrol...

The prediction and explanation of academic performance and the investigation of the factors relating to the academic success and persistence of students are topics of utmost importance in higher education. The main aim of the present study is to develop and test a conceptual framework in a university context, where the effects of achievement goals,...

While e-commerce has witnessed extensive growth in recent years, so has consumers’ concerns regarding ethical issues surrounding online shopping. The vast majority of earlier research on this area is conceptual in nature, and limited in scope by focusing on consumers’ privacy issues. This study develops a reliable and valid scale to measure consume...

Purpose The main purpose of this research is to gain a clearer understanding of several key determinants and consequences of the ethical behaviour of salespeople. Design/methodology/approach Questionnaires were administered during regularly scheduled meetings to a total of 280 financial services salespeople. The salespeople questioned were mainly...

Although an important avenue for customer value creation is the interaction between the service frontline employees and their customers, little attention has been paid to the consequences of frontline employees' organisational citizenship behaviour (OCB) for customer relationship outcomes. One possible reason for this is that there is no scale avai...

This research analyzes the role of ethical salesperson behavior as perceived by the customer in developing a better quality relationship between the salesperson and the customer. The results show that perceived ethical sales behavior plays a major role in affecting the quality of the buyer–seller relationship as it has a positive effect on customer...

Effective listening is crucial for salespeople to succeed in today's personal selling environment, yet poor listening is still one of the most important factors contributing to a salesperson's failure. Despite its importance, very little research has focused on effective listening in this context. This study proposes a model that explains the effec...

The need to be customer-focused to the highly changing marketing environment has never been more important for service institutions. However, under the present circumstances, where customers are becoming more demanding and increasingly mobile between service providers, being customer-oriented is not enough. Service companies need to focus on non- c...

The need to be customer-focused to the highly changing marketing environment has never been more important for financial services institutions. However, under the present circumstances, where customers are becoming more demanding and increasingly mobile between competing financial providers, being customer-oriented is not enough. Financial services...

When negotiation parties belong to different cultures, training can either increase or decrease negotiation differences in order to decrease or increase, respectively, the likelihood of achieving successful sales encounters and long-term relationships. This study analyses sales training implementation practices of 128 northern European (the UK, The...

This study examines the effects of sales training on sales force performance and customer orientation in the context of small and medium-sized companies (SMEs). The results give empirical evidence of the importance of sales training investment as a means of increasing sales performance. However, more training investment does not imply higher levels...

p class="Cuerpodeltexto0">En este artículo se analizan, por un lado, las actividades que tradicionalmente viene desempeñando la dirección de ventas en la empresa y el vendedor personal en el desarrollo de sus funciones. Por otro lado, se estudia la transformación que, como consecuencia de diversos cambios producidos en el entorno de la venta person...

El presente trabajo se enmarca dentro del paradigma relacional de la venta personal, en un contexto de empresas industriales de pequeño y mediado tamaño (PYMES). En este ámbito se analiza el efecto de los comportamientos relacionales del vendedor personal (venta orientada y venta ética) sobre la satisfacción, confianza y lealtad del comprador con l...