Taking the Good with the Bad--Customer Type as a Segmentation Criterion and Differential Influencer of Sales Performance

The authors use the theory of organizing framework for sales research to demonstrate that customer organizational citizenship behavior (COCB) is a meaningful and useful customer segmentation criterion. First, they discern from open-ended responses what salespeople mean by "best," "typ...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inJournal of marketing theory and practice Vol. 24; no. 3; pp. 283 - 305
Main Authors Shannahan, Rachelle J., Shannahan, Kirby L. J., Bush, Alan J., Moncrief, William C.
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Abingdon Routledge 02.07.2016
Taylor & Francis, Ltd
Taylor & Francis Ltd
Subjects
Behavior
Communication
Customers
Influence
Market segmentation
Personal selling
Productivity
Sales
Sales management
Salespeople
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Summary:The authors use the theory of organizing framework for sales research to demonstrate that customer organizational citizenship behavior (COCB) is a meaningful and useful customer segmentation criterion. First, they discern from open-ended responses what salespeople mean by "best," "typical," and "worst" customers. They then empirically demonstrate the differential influence of COCB by customer type on salespeople's evaluations of their customers and on three aspects of sales performance-customer-involved sales performance, salesperson behavioral effectiveness, and salesperson outcome productivity. The three customer-type comparison reveals that the COCB of best and typical customers has a positive influence on all three aspects of sales performance while the COCB of worst customers has a negative influence on them. These findings have implications for customer evaluation, customer segmentation, salesperson evaluation, and sales training.
ISSN:1069-6679
1944-7175
DOI:10.1080/10696679.2016.1170535