A survey of marketing literature reveals that little, if any, empirical research has been done to examine the impact of the adoption of the marketing concept on new product planning. The purpose of this paper is to describe a research study done to fill this void.

A survey of marketing literature reveals that little, if any, empirical research has been done to examine the impact of the adoption of the marketing concept on new product planning. The purpose of this paper is to describe a research study done to fill this void.

This article points out certain conceptual and inferential problems in Cook's (1983) article, and discusses their implications from a strategic marketing standpoint.

This article reviews pertinent research related to the antecedents of turnover and discusses a research study involving a national industrial firm's salesforce. The study examined the moderating effect of salespeople's performance on the relationship between their job satisfaction and propensity to leave their firm. The paper concludes with implications for researchers and sales managers.

This article reviews pertinent research related to the antecedents of turnover and discusses a research study involving a national industrial firm's salesforce. The study examined the moderating effect of salespeople's performance on the relationship between their job satisfaction and propensity to leave their firm. The paper concludes with implications for researchers and sales managers.

Excellent service is the foundation for services marketing, contend Leonard Berry and A. Parasuraman in this companion volume to Delivering Quality Service. Building on eight years of research, the authors develop a model for understanding the relationship between quality and marketing in services and offer dozens of practical insights into ways to improve services marketing. They argue that superior service cannot be manufactured in a factory, packaged, and delivered intact to customers. Though an innovative service concept may give a company an initial edge, superior quality is vital to sustaining success. Berry and Parasuraman show that inspired leadership, a customer-minded corporate culture, an excellent service-system design, and effective use of technology and information are crucial to superior service quality and services marketing. When a company's service is excellent, customers are more likely to perceive value in transactions, spread favorable word-of-mouth impressions, and respond positively to employee-cross-selling efforts. The authors point out that a service company that does relatively little pre-sales marketing but is truly dedicated to delivering excellent quality service will have greater marketing effectiveness, higher customer retention, and more sales to existing customers than a company that emphasizes pre-sale marketing but falls short during actual service delivery. The focus of any company, they insist, must be customer satisfaction through integration of service quality throughout the entire system. Filled with examples, stories, and insights from senior executives, Berry and Parasuraman's new framework for effective marketing servicescontains the key to high-performance services marketing.

In this article, the authors examine the roles that price, performance, and expectations play in determining satisfaction in a discrete service exchange. The authors maintain that the price fluctuations common to the many service industries that implement demand-oriented pricing, combined with the inherent heterogeneity of service performance, likely result in price–performance combinations that vary widely. Furthermore, the authors propose that the level of price–performance consistency in a service exchange moderates the relationship between performance expectations and subsequent performance and satisfaction judgments. When price and performance are consistent, expectations have an assimilation effect on performance and satisfaction judgments; when price and performance are inconsistent, expectations have no effect on performance and satisfaction judgments. To examine these issues, the authors develop a contingency model that they estimate using data from a multimedia experimental design. The results generally support the contingency framework and provide empirical support for normative guidelines that call for creating realistic performance expectations and offering money-back service guarantees.

In this article, the authors examine the roles that price, performance, and expectations play in determining satisfaction in a discrete service exchange. The authors maintain that the price fluctuations common to the many service industries that implement demand-oriented pricing, combined with the inherent heterogeneity of service performance, likely result in price–performance combinations that vary widely. Furthermore, the authors propose that the level of price–performance consistency in a service exchange moderates the relationship between performance expectations and subsequent performance and satisfaction judgments. When price and performance are consistent, expectations have an assimilation effect on performance and satisfaction judgments; when price and performance are inconsistent, expectations have no effect on performance and satisfaction judgments. To examine these issues, the authors develop a contingency model that they estimate using data from a multimedia experimental design. The results generally support the contingency framework and provide empirical support for normative guidelines that call for creating realistic performance expectations and offering money-back service guarantees.

Employee turnover is a subject of great importance to practitioners and researchers alike. Though the research on employee turnover in general is extensive, a search of the literature uncovered few truly longitudinal studies of salesperson turnover. On the basis of the general turnover findings, the authors develop seven hypotheses relating salesperson demographic characteristics and job attitudes to turnover and test them by analyzing data gathered over a decade by a large national sales organization. The results raise questions about conclusions from previous studies and afford several new insights and implications for sales managers and researchers.