Students' desire and intention to pursue a career in sales continue to lag behind industry demand for sales professionals. This article develops and validates a reliable and parsimonious scale for measuring and predicting student intention to pursue a selling career. The instrument advances previous scales in three ways. The instrument is generalizable across academic settings and is shown to be sensitive to differences across varied course coverage and learning activities. The instrument is parsimonious and offers a high reliability coefficient. Finally, the instrument is validated both before and after exposure to a sales module, thus capturing perceptual and attitudinal changes as students become more familiar with this career option.

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

Purpose – This paper aims to develop an omni-channel framework in the context of sales and sales management related to six areas: sales contexts, impact of technology, stages in the sales process, impact on relationships, impact on firm performance and the role of various communication tools and platforms. The paper also offers future reach needs in each of these areas. Design/methodology/approach – Literature review and research needs development. Findings – Research in omni-channel marketing in the context of sales and sales management is virtually silent. The authors identify key research gaps and offer recommended future research opportunities. Originality/value – To date, little research in sales and sales management has studied multi-channel marketing. The omni-channel research framework reported here is unique and will help guide research in this area.

Purpose – The purpose of this article is to review the consumer behavior and social network theory literature related to the online and e-commerce context. Design/methodology/approach – To conduct the review, the authors draw on a sample of 942 articles published from 1993 to 2012 addressing consumer behavior or social network issues in the online or social media context. The sample is analyzed by both era (incubation, expansion and explosion) and primary topic. Findings – Eight categories of online consumer behavior research are described. In the order from largest to smallest, these are: cognitive issues, user-generated content, Internet demographics and segmentation, online usage, cross cultural, online communities and networks, strategic use and outcomes and consumer Internet search. Originality/value – The literature has been summarized in each category and research opportunities have been offered for consumer behavior and social network scholars interested in exploring the online context.

No abstract

There is clear and pervasive evidence of a global shortage of professionally trained salespeople. This shortage is expected to grow dramatically through 2020 across a wide swath of business sectors (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2014). In response, universities have increased their offerings of sales courses and curricular options. As evidence, since 2003, the number of higher education institutions offering at least one sales course grew from 44 to 101, with 32 having some sort of sales major, minor, or degree concentration (DePaul University Center for Sales Leadership, 2012). Over this same time horizon, the number of member schools in the University Sales Center Alliance increased from 9 to 37 universities (University Sales Center Alliance, 2014). Despite this shortage, sales is still the most common first job for marketing students, employing 32% of new graduates. Additionally, sales is the second or third most common career entry point for graduates majoring in management, economics, general business, international business, finance, operations management, human resources, and management information systems (Carnevale, Strohl, & Melton, 2011). Even with these promising career entry statistics, interest in pursuing a sales career is surprisingly low; especially for those just beginning their business coursework (Bush, Bush, Oakley, & Cicala, 2014; Karakaya, Quigley, & Bingham, 2011). For many students, taking a sales position is more about needing to take a job on graduation rather than wanting to pursue sales as a career (Cummins, Peltier, Erffmeyer, & Whalen, 2013). As such, research is needed to better explain student reticence toward sales and how students can become better informed about whether or not sales is right for them (Bush et al., 2014; Peltier & Dixon, 2014). While sales will not be the chosen or right path for all students, the persistent misconceptions about sales as a career among the student population prematurely removes it from serious consideration. From a broader perspective, students' negative perception of the sales role may hamper their academic investigation and understanding of sales as a part of the promotion mix. The role of different selling processes, sales management structures, and the strategic use of personal selling within the broader promotion mix is critical in a robust and complete marketing plan (Loe & Inks, 2014). If students' negative perceptions of a selling career prevent full exploration of the complimentary role sales can play in the broader marketing 568431J MDXXX10.

The ability of consumer judges to identify sustainable messages in environmental advertising and the effect of these messages is explored. A content analysis provides insight into these judges’ perceptions of the depth of environmental advertising messages. An experiment investigates the influence of sustainable messages and includes collection of cognitive response data to evaluate the cognitive dimension of sustainability messages. Content analysis results suggest that sustainability messages may influence how environmental advertisements are perceived. These findings are supported by the cognitive response data, which shows cognitive differences across advertisements, and the experimental manipulation that suggests sustainable ads may be more involving to consumers.

No abstract