Time, change, and longitudinally emergent conditions: understanding and applying longitudinal growth modeling in sales research

A within-person theoretical perspective in sales research: outlining recommendations for adoption and consideration of boundary conditions

“…Indeed, while there is certainly a lack of longitudinal research in general within the sales field (Bolander, Dugan, and Jones 2017), simply calling for increased consideration of longitudinal research may not solve the paucity of within-person research. As we demonstrate above, some longitudinal designs do not produce data suitable for within-person analysis (Curran et al 2014).…”

“…Examples include utilizing the number of sales calls as a proxy for effort (cf Ahearne et al 2010) or using existing customer satisfaction scores an organization collects as a proxy for customer-related performance, since this data may already exist within the organization. Indeed, objective sales data from company records may be available to many sales researchers (Bolander, Dugan, and Jones, 2017), and this data can provide a ready-made platform for within-person research.…”

“…We thus address how taking account of within-person effects should serve to help explicate a number of key boundary conditions in existing sales research (e.g., Busse, Kach, and Wagner 2017). In doing so, we advance also the research agenda of Bolander, Dugan, and Jones (2017), who advocate the use of latent growth modeling in longitudinal sales research. Our contribution to this stream of work is to, (1) explicitly focus on withinperson theory and repeated-measures empirical research, providing methodological and analytical considerations specific to conducting within-person analysis, and (2) identify analysis frameworks that are specific to dealing with different within-person research questions.…”

“…On this front, Bolander, Dugan, and Jones (2017) advocate the need for increased consideration of longitudinal designs in general in salesforce research. One key advantage of longitudinal research Bolander, Dugan, and Jones (2017) touch on is the ability to conduct a within-person analysis, providing that repeated-measures data is available.…”

Does it pay to be proactive? Testing proactiveness and the joint effect of internal and external collaboration on key account manager performance

“…It may be that one form of collaboration is more important at a particular relationship stage. One way to test this would be to conduct a longitudinal study (Bolander, Dugan, and Jones 2017) with a set of key accounts as partners initiate and subsequently develop their portfolio of relationships (Plouffe et al 2016). Such an approach, through repeated measures of the collaboration constructs, may be useful in understanding how different forms of collaboration work together as relationships develop over time.…”