The Journal of Marketing Education is publishing a special issue on Sales Education and Training in August 2014. In this article, we review the sales education literature from four primary journals and the business literature at large. The four primary journals are the
The international marketing literature abounds with studies outlining the various similarities and differences that exist across cultural and national boundaries (e.g. Hofstede 1980 ). Unfortunately, many of these studies have focused on descriptive comparisons between cultures and nations. This article develops a measurement instrument designed to explicate the degree to which national identity can be specified and the differences between that national identity and other nations. Utilizing Churchill's (1979) , and Anderson and Gerbing's (1988) guidelines for scale construction and application, this article develops an instrument to measure national identity and establishes norms for its usage, using samples from the United States, Japan, and Sweden. The overall objective of this study is threefold: 1) to develop an empirically sound instrument for measuring national identity; 2) to explore the importance placed on a unique national identity in the three nations comprising the sample; and 3) to consider differences in the underlying dimensions comprising these countries’ national identity and their impact on marketing strategy. The development of such a measurement instrument should provide a means by which the results of cross-cultural and cross-national research can be empirically tested and on which more rigorous theory building can be based.
The widespread use of the Delphi technique of decision making has led to many variations in format implementation by practioners and researchers. The classic Delphi typically includes four rounds of questionnaires and feedback. This study attempted to establish empirically the point of stability in a six-round Delphi. The results indicated that Delphi groups reached stability in their decision making after the fourth iteration, thereby providing empirical support for the length of the classic Delphi.
The present study compared the quality and the acceptance of group decisions on an evaluative problem (NASA Lost on the Moon Exercise). Four decision-making formats were employed: interacting, consensus, the nominal group techinique (NGT), and the Delphi technique. No idiosyncratic modifications were made in any of the formats. The results indicated that the Delphi groups produced the highest quality decisions followed by those of consensus, interacting, and NGT groups. The decisions of the consensus groups had a higher level of acceptance than did those of the other three formats, which did not differ in terms of acceptance. Predictions based on past studies using unmodified decision-making techiques were consistently supported.The need for effective methods of group decision making has never been greater than it is today. Increasingly, important organizational decisions are being assigned to groups or committees for evaluation and recommendation. Accordingly, research investigating decision-making techniques has grown extensively. Past research has been directed toward finding the &dquo;better technique&dquo; of a given pair of
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