Intraorganizational Determinants of Key Account Management Effectiveness

Abstract

While there is a significant amount of research on determinants of selling effectiveness for individual salespeople, there is a surprising lack of study of factors that affect selling effectiveness in team-selling situations. The authors focus on the context of key account management (KAM) and develop a conceptual model of factors that affect KAM effectiveness. They test hypotheses with data from 385 firms using structural equation modeling and find that firms should seek to build esprit de corps among those involved in KAM, should proactively initiate activities with key accounts and do these activities more intensively, should ensure that key account managers have access to key resources within the marketing and sales organization, and should involve top managers of the firm.

Managing in an economic crisis: The role of market orientation in an international law firm

“…Different market orientation scales now exist to rigorously test the concept in different situations and under diverse circumstances. For example, scholars apply market orientation theory to organizational functions such as key account management (Workman Jr., Homburg and Jensen, 2003) or sales (Siguaw, Brown, and Widing, 2004). Academic research also focuses on different business sectors including retail firms (Elg, 2002(Elg, , 2003Kara, Spillan, and DeShields, 2005;Rogers, Ghauri, and George, 2005) and other organizational orientations, such as entrepreneurial orientation (Atuahene-Gima and Ko, 2001;Bhuian et al, 2003).…”

Key Account Management – A Review

“…KAM is not a new concept in marketing literature (Piercy & Lane, 2005), and drivers in the business environment such as increasing competition, market maturity, globalisation, increased customer sophistication and power, rapid change and process refinement (McDonald, Rogers, & Woodburn, 2000) have led to increased supplier rationalisation and the need to form closer relationships with customers in the activity of retaining customers, adding value and lowering costs (Millman & Wilson, 1999;McDonald, Millman, & Rogers, 1997;Pardo, 1997;McDonald, Rogers, & Woodburn, 2000;Ojasalo, 2001;Workman, Homburg, & Jensen, 2003;Piercy & Lane, 2005;Wengler, Ehret, & Saab, 2006). Piercy and Lane (2005) presented a conceptual model of three types of value driven key account relationships.…”

“…KAM is important to practice in achieving organisation objectives and goals, however, it has received limited attention in the literature and there is lack of empirical research in this area (McDonald, 2000;Workman, Homburg, & Jensen, 2003;Piercy & Lane, 2005;Davies & Ryals, 2014).…”

“…In addition, there is the challenge of a lack of quantitative empirical studies on KAM literature (Workman, Homburg, & Jensen, 2003). Most KAM researches are conceptual and descriptive, based on interviews or surveys in a small number of companies (Shapiro & Moriarty, 1982).…”

“…These large firms are more demanding and powerful than before and have been observed in many industry sectors such as pharmaceuticals, automotive, retailing, and information technology. Previous studies have shown that these firms have reduced their base of suppliers to cooperate more closely with a limited number of preferred suppliers (Heide & Stump, 1995;Workman, Homburg, & Jensen, 2003;Tzempelikos & Gounaris, 2015). These developments have urged many suppliers to manage their limited resources effectively, particularly to these key customers.…”