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How Should the Firm Compensate Its Sales Force? The Basic Model

Sharan Jagpal

in Fusion for Profit: How Marketing and Finance Can Work Together to Create Value

This chapter shows how the firm should design sales force compensation plans to maximize its performance. It distinguishes whether or not the firm can observe the salesperson's effort. It shows how ... More

This chapter shows how the firm should design sales force compensation plans to maximize its performance. It distinguishes whether or not the firm can observe the salesperson's effort. It shows how marketing-finance fusion allows the firm to design compensation plans based on such factors as the firm's cost structure, cost and demand uncertainty, consumer satisfaction, the firm's cost of capital, and whether or not the firm delegates price-setting or sales call policy to the salesperson. It shows how the sales force compensation plan should allow for multiperiod effects and the impact of Internet advertising. In particular, it distinguishes different scenarios (e.g., whether Internet advertising and conventional advertising are substitutes or complements).Less

Differentiating consumers in professional services: information empowerment and the emergence of the fragmented consumer1

Angus Laing, Gill Hogg, Terry Newholm, and Debbie Keeling

in The consumer in public services: Choice, values and difference

This chapter suggests evidence that there is logic to the idea of the fragmentation of healthcare consumers. There is an evident move from a position in which consumers were characterised as passive ... More

This chapter suggests evidence that there is logic to the idea of the fragmentation of healthcare consumers. There is an evident move from a position in which consumers were characterised as passive and compliant, accepting the authority not only of medical science but also of the professional as decision maker. Expectations of the service encounter vary from compliant acceptance of both medical science and authority, to the active challenging of medical science as a paradigm and the medical professional as decision maker. The challenge lies in balancing the competing, and occasionally contradictory, perspectives of all the parties involved within a context in which the consumerist discourse has gained primacy. Given this trajectory of evolution, the retention of a unitary ‘one-size-fits-all’ model of service provision would seem unlikely to be effective in meeting these expectations and in ensuring consumer satisfaction.Less

The American Automobile Frenzy of the 1950s

Avner Offer

in The Challenge of Affluence

This chapter looks into the American automobile frenzy in the 1950s. Even more so than household appliances, motor cars are shiny, expensive, long-lasting durables. Yet in the marketing of motor cars ... More

This chapter looks into the American automobile frenzy in the 1950s. Even more so than household appliances, motor cars are shiny, expensive, long-lasting durables. Yet in the marketing of motor cars to American society in the 1950s, producers fell over each other in a frenzy of styling novelty. For buyers of new cars, the strongest selling point was sensual gratification, rather than status signaling. Eventually, many consumers reacted to styling excess by downshifting to more austere cars.Less

Stylized facts

Massimo Florio

in Network Industries and Social Welfare: The Experiment that Reshuffled European Utilities

Chapter 2 presents some stylized facts on the reform trends of network industries in the EU-15. To track actual policy changes in a testable way, some comparable summary indicators are needed. The ... More

Chapter 2 presents some stylized facts on the reform trends of network industries in the EU-15. To track actual policy changes in a testable way, some comparable summary indicators are needed. The OECD reform indicators are reported, and will be consistently used throughout the book. The chapter presents a bird’s eye perspective on energy and telecommunications reforms in the EU countries before enlargement. Moreover, to immediately introduce the main focus on reform outcomes, the chapter also shows price trends over the years 1990–2007 in 15 countries and consumer satisfaction for the three industries that we are going to consider in greater detail.Less

Challenges to Bringing Housing to Scale

Carol L. M. Caton

in The Open Door: Homelessness and Severe Mental Illness in the Era of Community Treatment

Permanent supportive housing is subsidized housing with treatment and support services. There is no agreed-upon standard model for housing homeless people with severe mental illness to guide both ... More

Permanent supportive housing is subsidized housing with treatment and support services. There is no agreed-upon standard model for housing homeless people with severe mental illness to guide both policy and practice. Among providers of mental health and housing services, there are markedly different conceptual approaches on how best to house and treat this population, and the types of available housing programs are quite varied. This chapter deals with the housing preferences of consumers and providers, and the problem of attrition from supportive housing. A detailed assessment of the evidence for supportive housing focuses on its impact on housing tenure, utilization and cost of crisis services, behavioral outcomes, and consumer satisfaction. The cost of bringing supportive housing to scale is discussed, along with unanswered questions for future research.Less

From Shopping to Schopenhauer: Huysmans, A vau-l'eau

in Consumer Chronicles: Cultures of Consumption in Modern French Literature

Joris-Karl Huysmans's 1882 novella, A vau-l'eau, tells the story of an old man named M. Folantin who witnesses the demolitions and new constructions in his neighbourhood, only to be replaced by ... More

Joris-Karl Huysmans's 1882 novella, A vau-l'eau, tells the story of an old man named M. Folantin who witnesses the demolitions and new constructions in his neighbourhood, only to be replaced by barrack-like apartment and office blocks that line the broad boulevards. The small businesses patronised by M. Folantin are transferring to the new commercial areas, where the character of the shops and the manners of the shopkeepers are profoundly different from what he used to know. Initially resisting the evolution of shopping habits, M. Folantin would soon appear to be dreaming of a new era where more money can buy more happiness even if he remains cognizant of the limitations of consumer satisfaction.Less