Journal of Business & Industrial Marketing最新文献

Purpose

To most people, money is a motivator, which is robustly true for salespeople. A high love of money attitude predicts university students’ poor academic performance in a business course and cheating in laboratory experiments and multiple panel studies, but money (income) itself does not predict dishonesty. Extrinsic reward undermines intrinsic motivation. Very little research has incorporated the grit construct in the sales literature and explored the relationship between grit and the love of money. Further, a growth mindset and a fixed mindset may also impact salespeople’s job performance. This study aims to explore a brand-new theoretical structural equation model (SEM) and investigate the relationships between individual characteristics (growth and fixed mindsets and grit orientation) and job performance directly and indirectly through a mediator – salespeople’s love of money attitude.

Design/methodology/approach

This study uses Qualtrics and collects data from 330 business-to-business (B2B) salespeople across several industries in the USA. This study uses a formative SEM model to test this study’s hypotheses.

Findings

First, there are significant correlations among grit, a growth mindset and a fixed mindset, revealing no construct duplication or redundancy. Second, both a growth mindset and grit indirectly enhance job performance through the love of money attitude – a mediator, offering a brand-new discovery. Third, counter-intuitively, a growth mindset and grit do not directly improve job performance. Fourth, grit is significantly and negatively related to the love of money attitude, adding a new twist to this study’s theoretical model. Fifth, a fixed mindset undermines job performance directly but is unrelated to the love of money. Overall, B2B salespeople’s love of money attitude (employee demand) undermines sales personnel’s self-reported job performance (organization demand) in the organization and employee’s supply and demand exchange relationship.

Originality/value

The findings reveal that a growth mindset, a fixed mindset and grit contribute differently to sales personnel’s love of money attitude and job performance in this study’s theoretical model. The love of money serves as a mediator. A commonly accepted belief is that money is a motivator. Money (income) itself and the love of money attitude are two separate constructs. This study’s novel discoveries provide the essential missing monetary-aspirations-to-job-performance link in the literature – ardent monetary aspiration undermines self-reported job performance. This study offers inspiration to help decision-makers make happy, healthy and wealthy decisions and improve performance.

Purpose

In the existing era, international trade is boosted by maritime freight movement. The academicians and Government are concerned about environmental contamination caused by maritime goods that transit global growth and development. Digital technologies like blockchain help the maritime freight business to stay competitive in the digital age. This study aims to illuminate blockchain technology (BCT) adoption aspects to alleviate early industry adoption restrictions.

Design/methodology/approach

This study adopts a two-stage approach comprising of structural equation modeling (SEM) with artificial neural networks (ANN) to analyze critical factors influencing the adoption of BCT in the sustainable maritime freight industry.

Findings

The SEM findings from this study illustrate that social, organizational, technological and infrastructual and institutional factors affect BCT execution. Furthermore, the ANN technique uses the SEM data to determine that sustainability enabled digital freight training (S3), initial investment cost (O5) and trust over digital technology (G1) are the most essential blockchain deployment factors.

Originality/value

The hybrid approach aims to help decision-makers and policymakers examine their organizational blockchain adoption goals to construct sustainable, efficient and effective maritime freight transportation.

Purpose

While some hydrogen (H₂) products are available in the industrial market, new clean H₂ applications are considered critical alternatives in decarbonization efforts. As suppliers need to understand how business customers conceive the value of hydrogen, this paper aims to investigate how the value of hydrogen is described in the published evidence and to identify or propose specific tools to assess its value.

Design/methodology/approach

An integrative literature review is developed to synthesize studies on the value of hydrogen to identify the main value categories. Then, the authors create a novel guideline by linking three value dimensions: 1) the product-oriented value (including sustainability), 2) the elements of B2B value and 3) the concept of goal-oriented value.

Findings

This paper categorizes the aspects of value discussed so far in the literature, suggesting conceptualizing the value of H₂ value-in-use based on economic, environmental, social and technological categories. The missing value categories from the marketing perspective are related to perceived value. A comprehensive guideline for assessing the value of H₂ for business customers was developed to address that gap. The guideline can evaluate hydrogen from a multicategory perspective and compare new hydrogen products with alternatives.

Originality/value

First, the authors present the value of hydrogen in the B2B marketing discussion. Second, the authors propose four hydrogen value categories based on the current state-of-the-art. Third, the authors developed the multicategory guideline for assessing the value of hydrogen products for business customers (VH₂-BC).

Purpose

Digital servitization research has focused on how manufacturing firms use digital technologies to change business models and offer smart services; less attention has been devoted to the degree to which external actors in the existing ecosystem accept these smart services. Therefore, the authors pose the following research question: How does a manufacturing firm introduce and gain acceptance of new smart services within an established ecosystem?

Design/methodology/approach

Building on servitization, ecosystem and legitimacy theories, this paper addresses the research question through an in-depth case study of a world-leading original equipment manufacturer that is currently developing and introducing new smart services in its existing ecosystem.

Findings

The findings suggest that external actors emphasize different types of legitimacy in deciding whether to accept a new smart service. The findings also show that the type of legitimacy required to gain acceptance changes throughout the development of the smart service, from the definition of the value proposition to the design and delivery of the service.

Practical implications

This study can assist smart service providers in identifying which type of legitimacy is important for each ecosystem actor and strengthening these types of legitimacy to gain acceptance from the ecosystem.

Originality/value

This study develops a framework to help describe the thresholds for acceptance of a smart service through the development phases, as well as to indicate the types of legitimacy that smart service providers must relate to when seeking to gain acceptance for their new offering.

Purpose

Although organizations are investing heavily in digital transformation (DT) of the sales function, implementation and exploitation at the sales force level are ongoing challenges. As sales managers serve as conduits of influence between top management and the sales force, the success of strategic initiatives, such as DT, hinges heavily on leveraging their influence to promote change adoption at the sales force level. Accordingly, this research is guided by the research question: how can sales organizations secure the buy-in of sales managers and induce their championing behaviors directed toward the sales force?. The purpose of this paper is to investigate how organizational and psychological resources influence sales managers' DT change champion through their change readiness.

Design/methodology/approach

Construing DT in sales as an organizational change that creates contextual job demands, the theoretical framework offers several hypotheses linking organizational and personal resources with sales managers’ change readiness and championing behaviors. The perceived impact of change is included as a moderating variable. Using data from a sample of 176 business-to-business sales managers, the hypotheses are tested using partial least squares structural equation modeling.

Findings

The authors demonstrate that two change-related organizational resources (change communication and change mobilization) and a personal psychological resource (psychological capital) facilitate sales managers’ emotional and cognitive change readiness, which, in turn, enhances their championing behaviors toward DT initiatives. Further, the authors find that perceived change impact augments the effects of organizational and psychological resources on change readiness, thus highlighting the importance of effective positioning of the outcomes of change.

Practical implications

This study provides practitioners with actionable guidance on securing the buy-in of sales managers for change initiatives such as DT. Specifically, communication and mobilization are critical inducements. Managers who score high on psychological capital can be targeted as change agents. Further, the impact of change needs to be framed positively, as the resultant perceptions magnify the effects of organizational resources.

Originality/value

While prior research has examined salespeople’s response to change, very little is known about the antecedents of change readiness and championing behavior among sales managers. Based on the results, the authors identify theoretical and managerial implications as well as future research directions.

Purpose

This study aims to determine the best way to apply material flow cost accounting (MFCA) in an SME environment with the goal of visualizing negative product cost during the manufacturing process and pinpointing places where improvements can be made.

Design/methodology/approach

This study uses a case study approach to demonstrate the usefulness of the MFCA tool in an SME in India that produces aluminum energy products used in the electrical power sector through gravity die casting.

Findings

According to the results, the company’s gravity die casting has a negative product cost margin of 27.38% as a result of MFCA analysis. It is also determined that the negative material cost is Rs. 22,919, the negative system cost is Rs. 462 and the negative energy cost is Rs. 1,069 for processing 300 kg of raw material. The typical monthly raw material processing for this company is 45,000 kg.

Originality/value

This research shows that MFCA’s implementation will improve the company’s environmental consciousness and bottom line. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first to implement MFCA in aluminum gravity die casting of electrical parts manufacturing.

Purpose

This study aims to explore challenges and opportunities in the digitalization of the business-to-business (B2B) customer journey in different buying situations. It also investigates where in the customer journey digital marketing is most efficient.

Design/methodology/approach

This research adopts a single case study approach to examine a B2B company that implemented digitalization in its customer journey in different buying situations. Data were collected through semistructured interviews, complemented by internal documents and information from the company’s website and social media, to identify reasons for and against the decision to digitalize the B2B customer journey.

Findings

Digitalization can offer firms a cost-effective and value-creating way to interact with customers in a B2B context. The B2B buying situation, however, plays a significant role in decisions on how to implement digitalization. Moreover, in the prepurchase phase, digital marketing is more effective in building awareness; in the purchase phase, personal selling is more effective in addressing customers’ needs.

Research limitations/implications

The use of a single case study cannot produce results directly generalizable to other contexts. However, the findings are applicable to the digitalization of B2B customer journeys in similar industrial contexts.

Practical implications

To successfully implement digitalization in the customer journey, B2B firms should choose digital tools according to different buying situations and phases in the customer journey, segment buyers by their needs rather than individual characteristics and integrate the sales and marketing functions.

Originality/value

This study contradicts prior research that claims that digital marketing can be used in a similar way in both B2B and business-to-consumer contexts. It further shows that the relevant demarcation is not between personal sales and digitalization but between automated digital marketing and individualized personal sales, regardless of medium.

Purpose

This conceptual paper aims to contribute to a better understanding of value creation and value capture with smart resources in the Internet of Things (IoT)-driven business models against the backdrop of an increasingly networked and connectivity-based environment. More specifically, the authors screen strategic management theories and adapt them to the specificities of new types of smart resources by focusing on a conceptual analysis of isolating mechanisms that enable value creation and value capture based upon different types of smart resources.

Design/methodology/approach

By adapting the state of the art of the contemporary resource-based discussion (resource-based view, dynamic capabilities view, relational view, resource-based view for a networked environment) to the context of IoT-driven business models, the paper typifies valuable intra- and inter-organisational resource types. In the next step, a discursive discussion on the evolution of isolating mechanisms, which are assumed to enable the translation of value creation into value appropriation, adapts the resource-based view for a networked environment to the context of IoT-driven business models.

Findings

The authors find that connectivity shapes both opportunities and challenges for firms, e.g. focal firms, in such business models, but it is notably social techniques that help to generate connectivity and transform inter-organisational ties into effective isolating mechanisms.

Originality/value

This paper lays a foundation for a theoretically underpinned understanding of how IoT can be exploited through designing economically sustainable business models. In this paper, research propositions are established as a point of departure for future research that applies strategic management theories to better understand business models that work with the digitisation and connectivity of resources on different levels.