An Examination of Student Loans, Partisanship and Complaining Behavior: The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau

This research examines consumer complaints within a government-to-consumer context. The study is focused on two highly discussed topics, student loans and partisanship. While student loans are widely promoted to college students, outstanding U.S. student loan debt trails only consumer debt. Similarly, a stark contrast exists between the views of the two major political parties within the U.S. Our examination provides a nuanced view of partisanship and its effect on complaining behaviors within the student loan realm. Specifically, our study investigates whether partisanship affects the level of student loan complaints submitted to a federal agency initiated during partisan division. Our contributions include the use of a diverse, integrated database that enables insights into complaining behaviors within an understudied area, the government-to-consumer context

Inside sales social media use and its strategic implications for salesperson-customer digital engagement and performance

Highlights Inside salespeople rely on four main strategies when it comes to using social media in their roles to engage with customers. Inside sales strategic social media use leads to higher levels of customer digital engagement and, ultimately, performance. Firm digital technology resources may shape the effects of inside sales strategic social media use. Abstract The nature of inside sales has shifted, increasing in autonomy, importance, and scope. Moreover, buyers are changing their preferences from face-to-face interactions to virtual-based relationships, leading to a future full of opportunities for inside salespeople using social media. The practitioner literature suggests that inside sales represent the sales business model of the digital era and a distinct strategic selling approach. While there has been a recent surge in theoretical research on inside sales, extant research fails to explore how and why inside salespeople uses social media as a critical tool. Research on social media use in sales has neglected to consider the growing role of inside sales, where sellers lack the opportunity to meet with customers face-to-face and must routinely rely on remote communication to interact with customers. As such, we use a grounded theory approach to investigate the “lived experiences” of inside salespeople at the intersection with social media in sales. Emergent from our findings is a framework depicting: inside sales strategic social media use → inside salesperson-customer digital engagement → inside sales performance. We also find that firm digital technology resources serve as enablement factors that shape the effects of the social media strategies that inside salespeople use

Finishing the euchromatic sequence of the human genome

The sequence of the human genome encodes the genetic instructions for human physiology, as well as rich information about human evolution. In 2001, the International Human Genome Sequencing Consortium reported a draft sequence of the euchromatic portion of the human genome. Since then, the international collaboration has worked to convert this draft into a genome sequence with high accuracy and nearly complete coverage. Here, we report the result of this finishing process. The current genome sequence (Build 35) contains 2.85 billion nucleotides interrupted by only 341 gaps. It covers ∼99% of the euchromatic genome and is accurate to an error rate of ∼1 event per 100,000 bases. Many of the remaining euchromatic gaps are associated with segmental duplications and will require focused work with new methods. The near-complete sequence, the first for a vertebrate, greatly improves the precision of biological analyses of the human genome including studies of gene number, birth and death. Notably, the human enome seems to encode only 20,000-25,000 protein-coding genes. The genome sequence reported here should serve as a firm foundation for biomedical research in the decades ahead

Sales unit knowledge leveraging mechanisms: A mixed method analysis of leveraging salesperson market knowledge

In this dissertation, the author examines the acquisition and utilization of the market knowledge from salespeople. The existing literature fails to identify what composes salesperson market knowledge and nor does it identify the mechanisms sales managers should use to access it. With this absence of guiding theory, the author conducted an exploratory qualitative study. The author found that salesperson market knowledge is composed of four components: customer, interactional, competitor, and environmental knowledge. The author also identified the mechanisms that sales managers could use to access, integrate, and utilize salesperson market knowledge calling it knowledge integrating mechanisms (KLMs). KLMs have four components: recognizing the value, probing for information, knowledge integration, and market knowledge deployment. The qualitative study also resulted in a theoretical framework in which the components of salesperson market knowledge impact sales unit outcomes mediated by KLMs. The outcomes included solution effectiveness, competitor responsiveness, and unit performance. In study two, the author tests these ideas using a cross-sectional sample of 257 sales managers in a business-to-business context. Although the results are broadly supportive of the predictions, they are also surprising, because they challenge the assumption that the presence of knowledge will actually impact outcomes in organizations. The author discusses the implications of these findings specifically for research on using salespeople as knowledge sources

Inside sales social media use and its strategic implications for salesperson-customer digital engagement and performance

The nature of inside sales has shifted, increasing in autonomy, importance, and scope. Moreover, buyers are changing their preferences from face-to-face interactions to virtual-based relationships, leading to a future full of opportunities for inside salespeople using social media. The practitioner literature suggests that inside sales represent the sales business model of the digital era and a distinct strategic selling approach. While there has been a recent surge in theoretical research on inside sales, extant research fails to explore how and why inside salespeople uses social media as a critical tool. Research on social media use in sales has neglected to consider the growing role of inside sales, where sellers lack the opportunity to meet with customers face-to-face and must routinely rely on remote communication to interact with customers. As such, we use a grounded theory approach to investigate the “lived experiences” of inside salespeople at the intersection with social media in sales. Emergent from our findings is a framework depicting: inside sales strategic social media use → inside salesperson-customer digital engagement → inside sales performance. We also find that firm digital technology resources serve as enablement factors that shape the effects of the social media strategies that inside salespeople use.This accepted aritcle is published as Nawar N. Chaker, Edward L. Nowlin, Maxwell T. Pivonka, Omar S. Itani, Raj Agnihotri, Inside sales social media use and its strategic implications for salesperson-customer digital engagement and performance. Industrial Marketing Management. 110(2021); 127-144. Doi: 10.1016/j.indmarman.2021.10.006. Posted with permission. © 2021 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved