Experiential projects bring students closer to real-world situations. This is valuable in sales education because the complexities of the sales process are difficult to learn from a textbook. A student project was developed that involved the selling of advertising space in a one-time newspaper insert. The project included a substantial minimum…

Online user-generated content has been ubiquitous. Consumers are eager to not only listen to the other consumers but provide opinion to the public. The former reduces the consumers' uncertainty about products and the latter reduces the firms' uncertainty about consumers. We examine the effect of online product reviews, a most common form of…

For decades, (going back to the 1950s) the negative attitudes students hold towards salespeople and sales careers have been of concern to university educators and to employers seeking to recruit well-trained sales people. While the increasing demand for university educated salespeople continues to grow, employers are struggling to meet that…

Substantial theoretical and empirical literature indicates inconsistent performance implications of intrinsic motivation, suggesting the possibility of some explanatory mechanisms. However, little is known about the factors that might explain intrinsic motivation and sales force performance relation, particularly in highly competitive and…

The "Journal of Marketing Education" is publishing a special issue on Sales Education and Training in August 2014. In this article, we review the sales education literature from four primary journals and the business literature at large. The four primary journals are the "Journal of Marketing Education," "Marketing Education Review," "Journal of…

This paper reports on an ethnographically based study of entry level supermarket work. The study, carried out in a large suburban supermarket in Auckland, New Zealand, focused on the literacy and numeracy practices of supermarket assistants, all who had English as an additional language. It found that skills such as oral communication, personal…

This address, given at a workshop on distributive education, dealt primarily with the coordination of classroom theories of retail selling with their application in the store. The teacher-coordinator, who is responsible for this step, often has such a full program that he tends to overlook it. The teacher must work with the merchant for an…

Buyers, their assistants, and merchandise managers work behind the scenes to keep stores stocked with products the buying public will like. In discussing career opportunities for buyers and merchandise managers, the article deals with training programs, employment opportunities, earning potentiial, and working conditions. (MW)

Two national firms with standardized marketing schemes employ persuasion rather than instruction in teaching an employee to sell. Students leave for their first assignment convinced of success in spite of a lack of skill. (JB)

The "Rainbow Shoppe", a two-hour distributive education preparatory project laboratory, is unique in its approach to simulating the real world of business because it uses computers to chart its sales, purchases, profits, and inventory. (Author)

The problem of increasing costs in acquiring sales can be met by training salespeople to become more effective and productive. An accountability system for salespeople and sales managers is presented based on the return on investment management formula, a combination which considers responsibilities, objectives, and indicators. (EC)

The article summarizes the findings from the September 1973 Bureau of Labor Statistics' first occupational wage survey of department stores in over 20 years, covering full-and part-time nonsupervisory workers in 17 occupations. Occupational wage levels varied widely with top pay levels reported in New York, San Francisco, and Seattle. (MW)

Opportunities exist to influence participation rates in favor of selling. The first step is to communicate the facts about modern sales careers-the challenges, satisfactions, and rewards-to the universities, colleges, and schools responsible for developing marketing people as well as to the general public. (Author)

This booklet, one of a series on Canadian career opportunities, is designed for those who are interested in a career in sales. The sales occupations described include manufacturers, wholesale, technical and scientific sales representatives, sales managers, purchasing agents and buyers, and retail sales persons and managers. Special sales careers…

Discusses the problems of applying quality methods to jobs that are not directly involved with manufacturing such as sales, merchandising, law, health care, accounting, and food service. Presents a model for nonmanufacturing organizations. (JOW)