Innovation commercialization, an important managerial challenge, depends heavily on the sales force for its success. However, little empirical research has examined how firms should direct sales reps in this task in a global, multicultural context. Drawing on self-determination theory, this study investigates how to motivate sales reps for innovation selling in different cultures with various financial and nonfinancial steering instruments. The authors collected data in two waves from sales reps in 38 countries on four continents, making this study one of the largest international investigations in sales research. Results reveal that steering instruments should correspond closely with reps’ national culture in terms of power distance, individualism, uncertainty avoidance, and long-term orientation. For example, findings show that whereas individualism strengthens the positive relationship between variable compensation for innovation-sales results and financial innovation performance through innovation-selling motivation, power distance and uncertainty avoidance weaken this relationship. Results also reveal that long-term orientation strengthens the positive relationship between supervisor appreciation for innovation-sales results and financial innovation performance through innovation-selling motivation.

Marketing excellence is a foundational principle for the discipline that is gaining increasing attention among managers and investors. Despite this, the nature of marketing excellence and its effectiveness remain unclear. This research offers insight by addressing two questions: (1) How do managers understand and exercise marketing excellence? and (2) How do investors evaluate marketing excellence? Study 1 merges insights from 39 in-depth interviews with senior executives and secondary data from 150 firm strategies to find that marketing excellence is a strategy type focused on achieving organic growth by executing priorities related to the marketing ecosystem, end user, and marketing agility. Study 2 quantifies the impact of marketing excellence on firm value by using a machine learning algorithm and text analysis through an original dictionary to classify the text from 8,317 letters to shareholders in 1,727 U.S. firm annual reports. Calendar-time portfolio models reveal abnormal one-year returns of up to 8.58% for marketing excellence—returns that outpace those associated with market orientation and marketing capabilities. Findings offer guidance to managers, educators, and investors regarding how marketing excellence manifests—paving the way for the allocation of firm resources to ensure that marketing drives organic growth.

This investigation examines how consumer durable goods producers can leverage virtual reality for new product development (NPD). First, the authors develop a pre-launch sales forecasting approach with two key features: virtual reality and an extended macro-flow model. To assess its effectiveness, the authors collect data from 631 potential buyers of two real-world innovations. The results reveal that the new approach yields highly accurate pre-launch forecasts across the two field studies: Compared to the actual sales data tracked after the product launches, the prediction errors for the aggregated first-year sales are only 1.9% (Study 1a, original pre-launch sales forecast), 0.0% (Study 1b, forecast with actual advertisement spending), and 20.0% (Study 1b, original pre-launch forecast). Moreover, the average the mean absolute percentage error (MAPE) for the monthly sales is only 23% across both studies. Second, to understand the mechanisms of virtual reality, the authors conducted a controlled laboratory experiment. The findings reveal that virtual reality fosters behavioral consistency between participants’ information search, preferences, and buying behavior. Moreover, virtual reality enhances participants’ perceptions related to presence and vividness, but not their perceptions related to alternative theoretical perspectives. Finally, the authors provide recommendations for when and how managers can use virtual reality in NPD.

This study investigates how to direct and assemble the sales force for new product selling. In a first step, the authors draw on self‐determination theory to explore and empirically test a threefold conceptualization of motivation. Results provide insights into why sales force steering works differently in the new product selling context. Specifically, results show that for new products’ financial performance, internalized new product selling motivation is more important than intrinsic and controlled motivation. In a second step, the authors show how firms can motivate different sales reps to achieve higher financial performance of new products. In doing so, they examine the interaction effects of sales reps’ predispositions and widespread firm‐steering instruments on new products’ financial performance. Results reveal that the new product sales orientation of the bonus strengthens the positive relationship between sales reps’ performance predisposition and new product financial performance but weakens the relationship between sales reps’ learning predisposition and financial new product performance. Moreover, results reveal that the new product sales orientation of the periodic review strengthens the positive relationship between sales reps’ learning predisposition and financial new product performance. A post hoc analysis shows that a differentiated steering approach that matches appropriate steering instruments with sales reps’ varying predispositions substantially enhances reps’ financial new product performance.

Negotiations today are less likely to be characterized by information asymmetry—the notion that buyers are less informed than sellers—due to the amount of information available to buyers. A number of industries have reacted to this change by shifting their attention to earning profits in aftermarkets: products and services that augment the main purchase (e.g., add-ons, insurance, financing, service and maintenance). In these aftermarkets, firms often retain an information advantage, even if information asymmetries are eliminated from the main purchase. This has given rise to an interesting setting untapped by prior research: information “symmetry” in the front end (main purchase) and information “asymmetry” in the back end (aftermarket). The authors argue that symmetry in the front end provides an opportunity to build trust, as the knowledgeable customer can verify the information disclosed by the seller. In an observational study in the automotive industry, the authors find that customers to whom the salesperson revealed the cost of a car at the beginning of the negotiation spent significantly more in the back end than others. As corroborated in subsequent studies, this effect holds only when cost is disclosed at the beginning of the negotiation and when customers can verify the cost information.