Knowledge that Transforms

AbstractThis study explains how manufacturers tackle the critical managerial challenge of transforming a product-focused sales force to undertake solution selling. Through an application of configurational theory, the authors explain how individual and organizational conditions combine to determine salespeople’s engagement in solution selling. Multilevel, multisource data from the sales organization of a global supplier of building solutions represent input from salespeople (N = 184), solution champions (N = 23), and sales managers (N = 26). A fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis reveals no single, optimal way to overcome transformation challenges. Rather, consistent with prior research, solution selling requires certain types of salespeople, because value-based selling is a necessary condition for successful engagement. Beyond this foundational condition, a heterogeneous sales force can be engaged, as long as the organization provides appropriate support that is tailored to individual salespersons’ needs. The findings affirm that this viable support can come from either sales managers or solution champions.

AbstractBrands allocate their social media advertising across multiple platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube. Because consumers use multiple social media, brand communications on one platform could generate engagement within the same platform (direct effects) and potentially impact engagement with the brand on the other platforms (spillover effects). Additionally, past engagement with a post on a platform could sustain into the future, thereby improving the longevity of posts (carryover effects). These effects could also vary across platforms. Drawing on recent advertising literature, the authors propose and test differential carryover, spillover, and direct effects within and across social media. The empirical analysis indicates that these effects exist and are significant, supporting the propositions presented. The analysis provides generalizable guidelines to social media marketers on the effectiveness of the various platforms at sustaining a post and at creating direct and spillover effects across other platforms. Finally, the study also exemplifies a resource allocation model for brands to use when allocating their efforts across the various social media platforms to maximize both consumer engagement and the firm’s return on social media investment.

AbstractTo examine whether four pre-selected front-of-pack nutrition labels improve food purchases in real-life grocery shopping settings, we put 1.9 million labels on 1266 food products in four categories in 60 supermarkets and analyzed the nutritional quality of 1,668,301 purchases using the FSA nutrient profiling score. Effect sizes were 17 times smaller on average than those found in comparable laboratory studies. The most effective nutrition label, Nutri-Score, increased the purchases of foods in the top third of their category nutrition-wise by 14%, but had no impact on the purchases of foods with medium, low, or unlabeled nutrition quality. Therefore, Nutri-Score only improved the nutritional quality of the basket of labeled foods purchased by 2.5% (−0.142 FSA points). Nutri-Score’s performance improved with the variance (but not the mean) of the nutritional quality of the category. In-store surveys suggest that Nutri-Score’s ability to attract attention and help shoppers rank products by nutritional quality may explain its performance.

AbstractSome companies design processed foods to contain aesthetic imperfections such as non-uniformities in shape, color, or texture. Simultaneously, consumers annually discard millions of pounds of unprocessed, safe-to-eat fruits and vegetables owing to aesthetic imperfections. Why design processed foods with aesthetic imperfections when people discard unprocessed foods because of them? Seven studies, including a choice study at a grocery store and an incentive-compatible study, show that the effect of aesthetic imperfections on consumer preferences depends on whether foods are unprocessed or processed. While imperfections negatively influence preferences for unprocessed foods, they positively influence preferences for processed foods. We attribute this preference shift to consumers making opposing inferences about the human care involved in producing aesthetically imperfect processed and unprocessed foods. Building on research highlighting the positive effects of human presence in production, we thus show that perceived care drives food choice. We discuss implications for product design, retail promotion, and sustainability.

AbstractMarketers increasingly use behavioral targeting in location-based mobile marketing (LBMM). However, highly personalized marketing messages like this may backfire by eliciting consumer reactance. We suggest that LBMM efficacy depends on its potential to minimize consumer reactance, which can be achieved by effectively combining location targeting (in-store vs. out-store), behavioral targeting (based on consumers’ product category involvement [PCI]), and the type of promotion offered (price vs. non-price promotion). Results of a field study, a virtual reality experiment, and two online experiments show that although in-store mobile ads are generally more effective in increasing sales than out-store mobile ads, this is only the case if consumers have low PCI with the advertised product category, because this decreases their reactance. To attract consumers to stores by out-store LBMM, we show that firms should offer price promotions to consumers with low PCI and non-price promotions to consumers with high PCI, because these combinations of location targeting, behavioral targeting, and type of promotion elicit the least reactance and therefore result in a higher probability to buy.