Business Basics : A Grounded Theory for Managing Ethical Behavior in Sales Organizations

Background: Managing co-workers’ ethical behavior in sales organizations is a complex social process. To start, sales organizations incorporate several actors to manage, often simultaneously, all with their own agendas. Ethics as a topic is convoluted because it encompasses context-based scenarios which may not have clear-cut right and wrong answers. The management process is an ongoing task managers deal with on daily basis, where mismanagement can lead to severe consequences. The majority of existing research on this area tends to focus on single factors in the management process, not the whole process. While there are some research studies that presents models or integrated frameworks describing the management process, they are few in number. Aim: The aim of this study is to derive empirical concepts and thereby try to develop a theory to facilitate an understanding of the process of managing co-workers’ ethical behavior, where the purpose is to ultimately build an integrated framework. More specifically, this study aims to describe the involved actors’ main concerns and the process by which these are continuously resolved. Methodology: In order to achieve the aim, a method with an inductive approach was necessary. The orthodox Grounded Theory methodology was chosen as research approach since it can generate conceptualizations in an integrated framework which help explain the occurring social processes. Working from this approach means that the researcher develops a new theory that is grounded in empirical data, where the researcher inductively describes the social process. The empirical data was mainly derived from interviews with actors within the field. The data was collected, coded and conceptualized in an overlapping procedure until an empirically derived theory emerged After the emergence of the theory, the empirical data was validated with existing academic literature. Findings: The core category in this study is Business Basics and concerns the desire to continuously conduct business where the management of ethical behavior is a fundamental basis to achieve this. Five distinct categories, all related to the core category were revealed: Bureaucratization, Relationship Investing, Educationing, Monetary Managing and Intuiting. These categories are expressed in social and dynamic processes. They represent different activities, tools, influences and practices that managers can adopt in order to reach their main concern. Contribution: As a contribution, this dissertation provides an integrated framework based on the actors own subjective experiences, describing the dynamic and social processes of managing co-workers ethical behavior in sales organizations

Irriterande TV-reklam : Vad det är i TV-reklam som är irriterande och hur påverkar det konsumenternas köpbeteende?

ABSTRACT Title: Annoying television advertising - What is it about television (TV) commercials that are perceived as annoying and how does it affect the viewer’s purchasing behavior? Level: Final assignment for Bachelor Degree in Business Administration Authors: Benny Berggren and Sofie Erenlöf Supervisor: Jonas Kågström Date: 2012 – May Aim: Advertising can be found in many shapes and forms such as on: billboards, radio stations, public transport and of course on television. The last form of advertising is possibly one of the most effective and widely used methods of advertising due to the wide percentage of households with a TV in this technological age. One of the problems TV viewers have to face is the wide variety of TV advertisements which are repetitive and can be seen on numerous occasions throughout the day. This is only one of many factors that may cause irritation to the viewer if being executed wrong. Irritation leads to animosity. Animosity leads to a negative attitude. A negative attitude, may lead to difficult decision making for the consumer whether he or she should make that purchase or or go to a competitor. There are two purposes of this thesis. The first is to explore what general factors create irritation and the second is to explore if enough irritation has the effect of making the consumer choose a competitor brand over the proffered advertised brand as witnessed on TV. Method: This thesis is of the abductive kind. The first part of this thesis consists of a theoretical part. The theoretical part consists of secondary (scientific articles and models). The third part consists of empirical research. In order to collect the opinions of the TV-audience in Sweden, an electronic survey was conducted where the respondents were asked about demographic questions, causes of irritation toward selected Swedish advertising commercials. Result & Conclusions: The results from this thesis indicated that consumers perceive TV-advertising very differently. Results showed that the respondents found a commercial from electronic media giant Siba to be the most annoying one. The main factors deemed to be of great annoyance in a TV commercial were as follows; volume, tempo, characters of the commercial, a confusing message and the TV commercial being too repetitive. Furthermore, there were no indications that the consumer would rather go to a competitor due to the irritating commercial and no significant correlations were found. Suggestions for future research: Not once did the respondents suggest that commercials from multibillion dollar corporations, such as Coca Cola and McDonalds were being perceived as annoying. Could it be that those companies are too afraid to be different by standing out too much during commercials in fear of losing market share, or do they simply know which of the irritating factors to stay away? Further research regarding this matter is suggested. Contribution of the thesis: Our goals for this thesis is to make a difference, so that future marketers will have an even greater success when marketing their products due to them being more aware of what to include and what not to include in their commercials. Key words: TV-commercials, irritation, consumer behavior, message and volume

According to Swedish Citizens - Sweden has the Safest and Best Food in the World : -Really?

Title: According to Swedish Citizens – Sweden has the Safest and Best food in the world – Really? Level: Thesis for Master’s Degree in Business Administration Authors: Benny Berggren and Mai Nasser Fouda Supervisor: Jonas Kågström, Ph.D. Date: May 20, 2013 Aim: The aim of this thesis is to fill the research gap on whether there are differences in how Swedish consumers remember publicized scandals in regards to the Country of Origin (COO), focusing on age, gender and time. Furthermore, this paper will also aim to look at how different scandals have affected the consumers trust based on whether foreign food scandals have a higher impact. Methodology: Since this thesis tested different relationships a deductive approach was taken with a conclusive research design. Quantitative data was collected via a VAS-scale questionnaire to 187 individuals via random sampling at train stations which had a response rate of 75,9%. By using SPSS, the primary data was analyzed via a Correlation and Factor analysis in accordance with scientific articles from within the fields of Purchasing Decision theory, the COO and Consumer Memory. A semi-open telephone interview with an expert from within the food industry was conducted as additional explanations to the findings were needed. Result & Conclusions: It was found that Swedish consumers remembered scandals differently depending on origin, and were according to themselves more affected by the foreign scandals. Gender did not have a preference depending on the COO of the product and consumer memory while age did. It was also found that trusting food was the essential theme throughout the empirical findings where the Swedish consumers valued cues such as food quality and food safety. This played a significant role on impacting the consumer’s long-term memory. Three different types of trust was found and divided by their characteristics; High-level-involvement products, the COO of the product or the company which the scandal was involved with, and finally, the size, positioning and equity of the brand involved. Business implications: Media can be seen as a key source of spreading negative publicity regarding scandals. It is therefore extra important for companies to act immediately, especially if they have any of the three characteristics of trust since it influences the consumer’s long-term memory in a negative way. These three characteristics combined could have strong more negative impact on the companies, where there is a risk of losing potential & current business partners, decreased brand equity & image and risk of facing legal aspects. This can be very costly both financially and time-wise which ultimately could lead to a negative turnover. Research Implications: future research is suggested to study why the results in this thesis differ from the other scientific findings when it comes to gender. Also suggested is that studies should be conducted similar to this, but based on specific types of food products since this thesis only studied food in general. Furthermore, studies comparing the effect of the consumer memory in regards to food scandals based on different companies are also suggested. Key words: Country of Origin, Scandals, Memory, Trust, Purchasing behavior

The demand-what-you-want strategy to service recovery : Achieving high customer satisfaction with low service failure compensation using anchoring and precision effects

Purpose Previous research suggests that the compensation offered to customers after a service failure has to be substantial to make customer satisfaction surpass that of an error-free service. However, with the right service recovery strategy, it might be possible to reduce compensation size while maintaining happy customers. The aim of the current study is to test whether an anchoring technique can be used to achieve this goal. Design/methodology/approach After experiencing a service failure, participants were told that there is a standard size of the compensation for service failures. The size of this standard was different depending on condition. Thereafter, participants were asked how much they would demand to be satisfied with their customer experience. Findings The compensation demand was relatively high on average (1,000–1,400 SEK, ≈ $120). However, telling the participants that customers typically receive 200 SEK as compensation reduced their demand to about 800 SEK (Experiment 1)—an anchoring effect. Moreover, a precise anchoring point (a typical compensation of 247 SEK) generated a lower demand than rounded anchoring points, even when the rounded anchoring point was lower (200 SEK) than the precise counterpart (Experiment 2)—a precision effect. Implications/value Setting a low compensation standard—yet allowing customers to actually receive compensations above the standard—can make customers more satisfied while also saving resources in demand-what-you-want service recovery situations, in particular when the compensation standard is a precise value