Household debt relative to disposable income increased from 60% in 1980 to 104% at the
end of 2003.'Buying on credit'has become so popular that an increasing number of firms …

False failure returns are products that are returned by consumers to retailers with no
functional or cosmetic defect. The cost of a false failure return includes the processing …

As designing effective sales force financial compensation (SFFC) is as important as it is
challenging, it comes as no surprise that SFFC has been the subject of research for over 60 …

Sales contests are commonly used by firms as a short-term motivational device to increase
salespeople's efforts. Conceptually, sales contests and piece-rate schemes, such as salary …

The sales lead black hole—the 70% of leads generated by marketing departments that sales
representatives do not pursue—may result from competing demands on sales reps' time …

Organizations increasingly seek solutions to their open-ended design problems by
employing a contest approach in which search over a solution space is delegated to outside …

Firms engaged in personal selling in business and retail markets tend to invest substantial
portions of their marketing budgets on lead generation through marketing agents and …

Designing compensation plans with an appropriate level of incentives is a key decision
faced by managers of direct sales forces. The authors use data on individual salesperson …

Sales contests are short-term incentives that managers use to raise sales effort. The extant
marketing theory predicts that the optimal prize structure should have two characteristics:(1) …

In this paper, we take an integrated view of Transaction Cost Analysis (TCA) and Agency
Theory (AT) in order to study the direct salesforce vs. rep decision and the design of …