Papers by Cinthia B Satornino
Journal of Business Research
Journal of Marketing
People with the personality traits of Machiavellianism, narcissism, and psychopathy (i.e., the da... more People with the personality traits of Machiavellianism, narcissism, and psychopathy (i.e., the dark triad) are prevalent in the sales profession. Yet research into sales performance drivers tends to focus on positive personality traits. The authors examine the dark triad’s effect on salesperson performance and reveal some conditioning factors that influence these links. A longitudinal study that pairs surveys and objective performance data from a national insurance agency reveals the complex effects of dark triad traits on performance over time. Another study, based on data from a direct sales organization and employing social network analysis, relies on partial least squares structural equation modeling to determine the role that the social structure plays in conditioning the relationship between dark triad traits and performance. The results yield insights into both the challenges and the opportunities that dark traits present for managers and scholars.
Sales education is on the rise and for good reason. Statistics say that sales jobs will continue ... more Sales education is on the rise and for good reason. Statistics say that sales jobs will continue to grow at a rapid rate over the next few years. Many universities are preparing their students to start their careers in the professional selling function through the inclusion of sales education in their business curriculum. Yet little research exists that investigates the relationship between sales education and sales performance on graduating from a college of business. This article seeks to fill this void in the sale pedagogy literature by assessing, empirically, the relationship between what is learned in university sales programs and the actual selling behaviors of recent graduates from these programs (vs. students who did not receive formal sales education in their undergraduate programs). Likewise, the relationship between sales education and extrinsic and intrinsic performance indicators is investigated. The findings suggest that university sales education is a significant contributor to sales rep performance. However, the results on the behaviors taught and those used in day-to-day selling were mixed.
Back to the Future: Using Marketing Basics to Provide Customer Value, 2017
Few would argue that the success of any firm is tied to its ability to create value. Yet the conc... more Few would argue that the success of any firm is tied to its ability to create value. Yet the concepts of value and value creation remain poorly understood. Debates regarding the nature of value have been raging on many fronts-in philosophy, economics, and marketing. However, like the quest for "The Theory of Everything" in the physical sciences, marketing scholars have yet to develop a comprehensive theory of value that incorporates the multidimensional nature of value and explains how value is created. This void is problematic for practitioners, scholars, and stakeholders. How can marketers create what is not understood? How can scholars study what is not clearly defined? Moreover, how can stakeholders measure what is not properly articulated? When faced with the task of creating value, uncertainty about what value "is" leads to unclear managerial priorities and muddled metrics, resulting in suboptimal outcomes. The current paper seeks to address these challenges by introducing the concept of comprehensive value. We first trace the evolution of value concepts in the marketing discipline as evidenced by the historically dominant logics driving scholarship and practice. We then demonstrate that the evolution of the value concept has been plagued by an unspoken assumption that value must be either intrinsic (value in goods) or extrinsic (value in services). To move beyond this assumption, we turn to physics as a metaphor to demonstrate that, rather than an inert and static trait, value is a dynamic, phase-based attribute created within the marketing system. Finally, from the systemic view of value and value creation, we offer several propositions for marketing scholars.
Blockmodeling is viewed often as a data reduction method. However, this is a simplistic view of t... more Blockmodeling is viewed often as a data reduction method. However, this is a simplistic view of the class of methods designed to uncover social structures, identify subgroups, and reveal emergent roles. Worse, this view misses the richness of the method as a tool for uncovering novel human resource management (HRM) insights. Here, we provide a brief overview of some essentials of blockmodeling and discuss research questions that can be addressed using this approach in applied HRM settings. Finally, we offer an empirical example to illustrate blockmodeling and the types of information that can be gleaned from its implementation.
Relationships inside the company help boost sales performance, write Willy Bolander and Cinthia S... more Relationships inside the company help boost sales performance, write Willy Bolander and Cinthia Satornino
Journal of Business Research, 2021
Abstract That artificial intelligence (AI) has the potential to provide significant benefits is g... more Abstract That artificial intelligence (AI) has the potential to provide significant benefits is generally accepted by both practitioners and scholars. However, the dark side of AI is less discussed, and less understood. In this paper, the authors first classify the wellspring of AI benefits in both B2C and B2B settings. In B2C settings AI benefits are primarily via customized experiences, while B2B AI benefits are manifested via business efficiencies. Next, guided by the relationship marketing literature, the authors identify the drivers of the dark side of AI - lack of trust and power asymmetries, with lack of trust being a stronger factor in B2C settings and power asymmetries being a stronger factor in B2B settings. Finally, the authors provide an organizing framework for understanding both the bright side and the dark side of AI, in both B2C settings and B2B settings. This paper is differentiated from prior work by its focus on B2B settings (most focus on B2C settings), and by its focus on the dark side of AI (most focus on the bright side of AI).
Journal of Personal Selling & Sales Management, 2021
Research suggests that political skill affects how salespeople build and leverage social capital.... more Research suggests that political skill affects how salespeople build and leverage social capital. However, there are important questions left unanswered in this relationship. First, although it is linked to specific structural characteristics of networks, it is unclear how political skill affects the overall quality of one's social network. Similarly, it is unclear if objective and subjective social network quality measurement approaches produce comparable results. Third, although theory positions political skill and social network quality as desirable personal and structural resources, it is unknown how these resources affect dyadic relationships between salespeople and clients. Finally, there is a need to assess how the dimensions of political skill differentially affect social network quality. To address these questions, we propose a new model of social network quality, examining how political skill influences social network quality and salesperson performance in a two-study investigation. We begin by predictively testing the unique contributions of objective and subjective social network quality in the relationship between political skill and sales magnitude one year later. We then extend these findings using dyadic salesperson and customer data to explore how political skill and social network quality predictively impact sales magnitude, sales frequency, and relationship performance.
Journal of Consumer Marketing, 2019
Purpose Previous research studies assume that influential consumers (“influentials”), who play a ... more Purpose Previous research studies assume that influential consumers (“influentials”), who play a powerful role in the marketplace, are persuasive (or not) based on innate, static personality traits. By contrast, this paper proposes an emergence-based view of influentials. Grounded in dynamic self-concept theory, this research establishes that individuals possess an “influential” self-concept that can be activated by firm-originated communications. Specifically, the authors examine the impact of firm feedback on the three dimensions of influentials (and the corresponding traits and behaviors): who they are (propensity to connect with others), who they know (WOM) and what they know (expert power). Design/methodology/approach The study tests whether an influential self can be evoked by marketers using a longitudinal experimental test with data collected in three periods. The data are analyzed using a multi-mediation model and partial least squares structural equation modeling. Findings...
Journal of Personal Selling & Sales Management, 2019
Salesperson hiring decisions are critical for firms, and managers typically accept one of two vie... more Salesperson hiring decisions are critical for firms, and managers typically accept one of two viewpoints regarding optimal hiring strategies. The first asserts that prior sales experience allows new salespeople to perform immediately upon hire and represents a valuable hiring heuristic. The second believes lack of prior experience allows managers to mold new salespeople to the hiring firm's needs. Further complicating matters, formal sales education programs are gaining in popularity and may represent an alternative hiring heuristic for sales managers. Using unique multisource data (from both B2B and B2C firms), the authors explore the effects of these hiring heuristics in driving salespeople's longitudinal performance trajectories, along with the moderating role of post-hire manager coaching behaviors. Results of the longitudinal growth models show the distinct and opposing effects of each hiring heuristic and coaching strategy. The authors also identify critical areas of future research and managerial practice.
Journal of Consumer Marketing, 2019
Purpose The purpose of this study is to examine the impact of LEM participation on moral identity... more Purpose The purpose of this study is to examine the impact of LEM participation on moral identity. Lateral exchange markets (LEMs) enable ordinary people to monetize idle personal resources such as cars, homes, gadgets and skills. Despite its champions portraying actors in these exchange as moral citizens of society, recent findings suggest that egoistic motives drive participation. A salient moral identity motivates behaviors that show social sensitivity to others and enable cooperative actions. Given that platform-providing firms rely on users’ cooperative behaviors to facilitate lateral exchange, understanding factors that affect moral identity can have important implications for the success of such business models. Design/methodology/approach In this research, the authors move away from the ideological discourse behind actors’ motivations, to provide a pragmatic explanation of how participation erodes moral identity. The authors apply a social cognitive framework to examine how ...
and the consequences and promise of network-based team design. For managers, the work provides us... more and the consequences and promise of network-based team design. For managers, the work provides useful recommendations for enhancing product quality and customer satisfaction via social network-based team design, and identifies leader networks as crucial mechanisms for securing financial resources and neutralizing the downside of low and high team cohesion, thereby maximizing downstream product metrics.
Journal of Marketing Education, 2014
Sales education is on the rise and for good reason. Statistics say that sales jobs will continue ... more Sales education is on the rise and for good reason. Statistics say that sales jobs will continue to grow at a rapid rate over the next few years. Many universities are preparing their students to start their careers in the professional selling function through the inclusion of sales education in their business curriculum. Yet little research exists that investigates the relationship between sales education and sales performance on graduating from a college of business. This article seeks to fill this void in the sale pedagogy literature by assessing, empirically, the relationship between what is learned in university sales programs and the actual selling behaviors of recent graduates from these programs (vs. students who did not receive formal sales education in their undergraduate programs). Likewise, the relationship between sales education and extrinsic and intrinsic performance indicators is investigated. The findings suggest that university sales education is a significant cont...
Journal of Marketing, 2015
Although the study of salesperson performance traditionally has focused on salespeople's acti... more Although the study of salesperson performance traditionally has focused on salespeople's activities and relationships with customers, scholars recently have proposed that salespeople's intraorganizational relationships and activities also play a vital role in driving sales performance. Using data from 286 salespeople in a unique social network analysis, the authors explore the effects of salespeople's intraorganizational relationships on objective salesperson performance as well as the role of political skill in developing intraorganizational relationships. The results indicate that two types of social network characteristics (i.e., relational centrality and positional centrality) contribute substantially to salesperson performance. Moreover, salespeople's political skill is shown to be an antecedent to relational centrality but, surprisingly, not positional centrality. This finding demonstrates that researchers should not assume that all centralities represent simil...
To date, most methods for direct blockmodeling of social network data have focused on the optimiz... more To date, most methods for direct blockmodeling of social network data have focused on the optimization of a single objective function. However, there are a variety of social network applications where it is advantageous to consider two or more objectives simultaneously. These applications can broadly be placed into two categories: (1) simultaneous optimization of multiple criteria for fitting a blockmodel based on a single network matrix and (2) simultaneous optimization of multiple criteria for fitting a blockmodel based on two or more network matrices, where the matrices being fit can take the form of multiple indicators for an underlying relationship, or multiple matrices for a set of objects measured at two or more different points in time. A multiobjective tabu search procedure is proposed for estimating the set of Pareto efficient blockmodels. This procedure is used in three examples that demonstrate possible applications of the multiobjective blockmodeling paradigm.
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Papers by Cinthia B Satornino