This study investigates how purchase decisions may be influenced by ties linking customer account personnel and sales personnel. Two distinct forms of social contagion-cohesion and structural equivalence-are posited as mechanisms for triggering purchase similarity among customer accounts. We empirically test our hypotheses using field-collected sociometric data that captures social ties among customer accounts and sales personnel within a retail sales territory. The results support structural equivalence rather than cohesion as a key driver of brand choice similarity among retail firms. The paper concludes with a discussion of implications for sales management practice and research.
Our focus is the effect of public spending to promote tourism on tourism growth and broader economic growth among U.S. states. We estimate a series of regression models using a panel of state-level data for the years 1985 through 2003 to identify the effect of public tourism promotion spending (TPS) on state tourism growth, gross state product growth, and state employment growth, when such spending is financed through own-source revenues. Results indicate that the effect of higher TPS on tourism or employment growth depends on the existing level of tourism expenditures in the state. More specifically, results indicate that additional TPS increases tourism and employment growth for states that have low levels of initial tourism expenditures. However, that effect diminishes as initial levels of tourism expenditures increase. For states with very high initial levels of tourism expenditures, employment can decline following increased TPS funded through own-source revenues.
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