Bill Donaldson

Selling orientation, customer orientation (SOCO) highlights differences in approach to dealing with customers. The origins of the SOCO scale are described and the two approaches are compared and contrasted.

Sales force control is defined as the extent to which sales management monitor, direct, evaluate, and reward activities. Sales management control is typically seen as a continuum with two extremes: outcome‐based control and behavior‐based control. Reasons for selecting one strategy or the other are given to assist sales managers as to the best way to control and manage their sales force.

This paper investigates strategic and organisational context determinants of the sophistication of adopted sales force automation (SFA) systems in three UK industries: financial services, pharmaceuticals, and building/construction. Sophistication of adopted systems is associated with the organisation placing greater emphasis on information orientation, which is itself driven by an increased integration of IT and sales coupled with increased organisational slack. Increased integration of IT and sales is itself driven by increased strategic importance of sales coupled with increased use of internal communication networks. Importantly, a firm's marketing orientation, although also driven by the strategic importance of sales, has no impact on either information orientation or SFA sophistication. We discuss the implications of our findings to aid understanding of SFA implementation failure.

The paper considers how and why SME retailers use the internet in their procurement processes. Examining retailers' views and reasons, we relate these to existing technology acceptance models, employing a qualitative approach. Although our respondents accepted the pervasion of internet marketing, they believed that a more personalised approach to purchasing was necessary to maintain their competitive advantage. For them, effectiveness in purchasing took priority over efficiency. We argue that this view and the consequent actions were a result of the size of the firm and the nature of the products they sold. Our sample size prevents us from generalising. However, we argue that large scale surveys may miss the nuances of decision-making and that the unique character of SMEs may imply that conventional models of technology acceptance need to be modified to take account of these characteristics. Our findings challenge the assumption that one size theoretically fits all in technology driven procurement.

Regulatory focus theory (RTF) has demonstrated that individuals can be distinguished on the basis of two independent structures of strategic inclination and orientation in the pursuit of goals: promotion focus - which emphasises the presence of positive outcomes while minimising errors of omission, versus prevention focus - which favours the absence of negative outcomes and minimising errors of commission. Yet no research, thus far, has explicitly considered the potential link between consumers' regulatory focus (RF), perceived risk, affect, and their response to online marketing (ROM) in the various dimensions of online shopping (OS). This paper fills this gap. By linking regulatory focus with online consumer shopping behaviour we empirically test a number of hypotheses to predict how consumers with different foci perceive risk on the internet, the consequence of this perception on their affect, and their overall response behaviour to online marketing. Our findings provide confirmatory evidence that RF is a powerful predictor of behaviour in OS.

Can Regulatory Focus Help Explain Why We Shop Differently Online? – A Proposed Model and Research Agenda