Purpose The purpose of this paper is to propose future directions for research into stories and metaphors as concise communication tools that are particularly salient for the fast pace of today’s retail sales environment. Design/methodology/approach A cross disciplinary approach is taken to propose new avenues for sales communication research. Findings This work highlights research possibilities into the contextually sensitive constructs of stories and metaphors with associated theoretical approaches. This could improve research into stories and metaphors as communication techniques for retail selling. Research limitations/implications The findings indicate that stories and metaphors are highly engaging sensemaking tools that salespeople can use in retail sales encounters. The lack of existing literature within the sales domain suggests a significant learning curve in demarcating the use of these tools. Practical implications Stories and metaphors are presently used by salespeople but without the benefit of extensive scientific understanding. This paper builds a foundation for research that could bring clarity to the use of these tools in retail selling. Originality/value Researchers will benefit from a finer grained conceptualization with which to examine sales communication. The proposed research should get sales practitioners a clearer understanding of using stories and metaphors in sales encounters.
This study developed a Comparative Analysis of Attributions method to explore sensemaking after customer experiences and journeys. Its foundation rests on the constructs of attribution theory by which actors make sense of the causes of events. Customer experiences and journeys involve both consumers and the firm’s employees interacting at touchpoints in a value co-creation attempt; each actor then makes attributions about the exchange experience. The qualitative inquiry compared attributions across actors after value co-creation (co-destruction) in a banking services context during the financial crisis. This showed how misunderstandings of one’s own and others’ sensemaking attributions can affect value co-creation during the customer experience and journey. The analysis thus offered managerially actionable information. Marketers may then improve internal and external messaging, touchpoints, and operations for better customer journeys. Academic researchers may use this method to map the continuum of attributional biases, errors, and styles across actors, industries, and contexts.
Mass incarceration is an approach to managing public safety that emphasizes detention over other means. It is also neoliberalism's quintessential political and economic project because it mobilizes a prison industrial complex to generate revenue. We highlight rent-seeking, the pursuit of extra-budgetary revenues by carceral agencies, because it inflicts financial harm on incarcerated consumers and their supporters. Carceral agencies leverage government's authority to set the conditions of detention. However, when they also leverage government's market-making authority to seek rents from incarcerated persons we characterize that as a government failure. To understand it, we depart from a focus on corruption by specific actors to highlight features of institutions that enable unethical behavior. We join activists and elected officials who call for an end to mass incarceration, but we also highlight more immediate reforms that can help restrain rent-seeking and enable greater public scrutiny of the carceral state. Mass incarceration is an approach to managing crime and criminalized populations reliant on arrest and detention over other means of enhancing public safety. Although it just emerged in the mid-to-late-1970s, the population of incarcerated people in the United States stands at just under 2.3 million (Sawyer and Wagner, 2020). Incarceration on such a scale is unique. It is not replicated at any other place or time. So, its effects on social life have only become the object of
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