TY - JOUR
T1 - Understanding the adoption of new brands through salespeople
T2 - a multilevel framework
AU - Wieske, Jan
AU - Homburg, Christian
AU - Lee, Nick J.
PY - 2008/6
Y1 - 2008/6
N2 - So far there has been scant empirical attention paid to the role of the sales force in the adoption of new brands in the early implementation stages. We test a framework of internal (sales manager and salespeople) brand adoption using an empirical multilevel study. Our findings suggest that the construct of expected customer demand (ECD) plays an important role in sales force brand adoption. First, ECD directly influences salespeople’s and sales managers’ brand adoption. Second, ECD serves as a cross-level moderator of new brand adoption transmission. We find the influence of sales managers’ brand adoption on salespeople’s brand adoption to be stronger when salespeople’s ECD is lower.
AB - So far there has been scant empirical attention paid to the role of the sales force in the adoption of new brands in the early implementation stages. We test a framework of internal (sales manager and salespeople) brand adoption using an empirical multilevel study. Our findings suggest that the construct of expected customer demand (ECD) plays an important role in sales force brand adoption. First, ECD directly influences salespeople’s and sales managers’ brand adoption. Second, ECD serves as a cross-level moderator of new brand adoption transmission. We find the influence of sales managers’ brand adoption on salespeople’s brand adoption to be stronger when salespeople’s ECD is lower.
KW - brand adoption
KW - expected customer demand
KW - empirical
KW - multilevel
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=67649492582&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://www.springerlink.com/content/nr113278j360q796/
U2 - 10.1007/s11747-007-0055-z
DO - 10.1007/s11747-007-0055-z
M3 - Article
SN - 0092-0703
VL - 36
SP - 278
EP - 291
JO - Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science
JF - Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science
IS - 2
ER -