Two Essays on the Recommendation Behavior of Multi-line Salespeople

This dissertation consists of two essays in which we examine the recommendation behavior of multi-line salespeople. Multi-line salespeople are those who are able to choose among overlapping, competing manufacturers’ products to make a recommendation to their customers. In this dissertation, we seek to explain why and how multi-line salespeople may recommend particular products to their customers. In the first essay, we examine why salespeople may recommend a particular product. Manufacturers frequently face the challenge of motivating distributor salespeople to focus efforts on their products rather than on their competitors’. Thus, manufacturers often rely on outcome (e.g., rewards) and behavior (e.g., training) controls. We refer to these as external controls because they reflect mechanisms by which one firm directs another firm’s employees. External controls tend to raise concerns among salespeople about the appropriateness of being influenced by an outside firm, which can be alleviated by seeking cues about their managers’ external controls. The results of a three-source, multilevel study suggests that manufacturers can enhance the ability of salesperson external controls to drive focused effort (i.e., recommendations) by increasing similar sales manager external controls; however, increasing dissimilar controls may reduce the positive impact of salesperson external controls on their focused effort. In the second essay, we examine how salespeople may recommend a particular product. The process of how purchase decisions are made by customers is well-known in the literature (i.e., self decision-making); however, to date, there has not been a complementary understanding of how purchase decisions are made for customers (i.e., self-other decision-making). The results from a qualitative study involving 71 covert participant observation encounters with salespeople across 71 store locations of 3 retailers indicate a three-step recommendation process: goals, strategies, and recommendations. Drawing upon field observations and the decision-making literature, we show that salespeople emphasize different goals when recommending products than customers making decisions for themselves. We also complement prior research by expanding the scope of known decision-making strategies (self and self-other lexicographic) and surfacing a new decision-making strategy (product homogenization). Finally, we identify three recommendation types, and link the steps in the process model via a set of integrating propositions

Multi site polyadenylation and transcriptional response to stress of a vacuolar type H(+)-ATPase subunit A gene in Arabidopsis thaliana

BACKGROUND: Vacuolar type H(+)-ATPases play a critical role in the maintenance of vacuolar homeostasis in plant cells. V-ATPases are also involved in plants' defense against environmental stress. This research examined the expression and regulation of the catalytic subunit of the vacuolar type H(+)-ATPase in Arabidopsis thaliana and the effect of environmental stress on multiple transcripts generated by this gene. RESULTS: Evidence suggests that subunit A of the vacuolar type H(+)-ATPase is encoded by a single gene in Arabidopsis thaliana. Genome blot analysis showed no indication of a second subunit A gene being present. The single gene identified was shown by whole RNA blot analysis to be transcribed in all organs of the plant. Subunit A was shown by sequencing the 3' end of multiple cDNA clones to exhibit multi site polyadenylation. Four different poly (A) tail attachment sites were revealed. Experiments were performed to determine the response of transcript levels for subunit A to environmental stress. A PCR based strategy was devised to amplify the four different transcripts from the subunit A gene. CONCLUSIONS: Amplification of cDNA generated from seedlings exposed to cold, salt stress, and etiolation showed that transcript levels for subunit A of the vacuolar type H(+)-ATPase in Arabidopsis were responsive to stress conditions. Cold and salt stress resulted in a 2–4 fold increase in all four subunit A transcripts evaluated. Etiolation resulted in a slight increase in transcript levels. All four transcripts appeared to behave identically with respect to stress conditions tested with no significant differential regulation

Optically excited states in positronium

Optical excitation are reported of the 1 3S-2 3P transition in positronium, and a second excitation from n=2 to higher n states. The experiment used light from two pulsed dye lasers. Changes in the positronium annihilation rate during and after the laser pulse were used to deduce the excited state populations. The n=2 level was found to be saturable and excitable to a substantial fraction of n=2 positronium to higher levels. Preliminary spectroscopic measurements were performed on n=14 and n=15 positronium

MOMIS Dashboard: a powerful data analytics tool for Industry 4.0

In this work we present the MOMIS Dashboard, an interactive data analytics tool to explore and visualize data sources content through several kind of dynamic views (e.g. maps, bar, line, pie, etc.). The software tool is very versatile, and supports the connection to the main relational DBMS and Big Data sources. Moreover, it can be connected to MOMIS, a powerful Open Source Data Integration system, able to integrate heterogeneous data sources as enterprise information systems as well as sensors data. MOMIS Dashboard provides a secure permission management to limit data access on the basis of a user role, and a Designer to create and share personalized insights on the company KPIs, facilitating the enterprise collaboration. We illustrate the MOMIS Dashboard efficacy in a real enterprise scenario: a production monitoring platform to analyze real-time and historical data collected through sensors located on production machines that optimize production, energy consumption, and enable preventive maintenance