A1 - Customer Value Opportunity Recognition in Value-Creating Sales

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Sascha Alavi
• Subject Area: Accounting and Finance
• Term: from 2018 to 2022
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 407498709

The core goal of value-centred business models is to maximize value in use for customers. To achieve this goal, as a critical, indispensable first step, industrial suppliers need to identify value creation potentials for customers. In this research project, we refer to this crucial capability of industrial suppliers to identify value creation potentials in customers´ processes as value opportunity recognition (VOR). As the primary boundary spanner and face of the company to the customer, the sales force bears fundamental responsibility for acquiring a precise, sophisticated understanding of industrial customers. Consequently, VOR represents a core task of the sales force in value-creating sales and a first important step in selling processes of value-centred business models. Despite its relevance in business markets, to date, in marketing and sales research VOR is not adequately understood. While the identification of value potentials in business-to-consumer contexts is generally well explored, VOR by the sales force for value-centred business models has not been sufficiently examined. This state of research sets the starting point of project A1, which exhibits three goals. In Goal 1, this project strives to develop a concept for the VOR process in value-creating sales and for the construct quality of the VOR process. Goal 2 seeks to examine sales force factors that are affecting salespeople’s quality of VOR in value-centred business models. Eventually, Goal 3 aims at exploring consequences of quality of salespeople’s VOR in different market and organizational situations.To achieve these goals, project A1 comprises five work modules over a period of three years. In Module 1, addressing Goal 1, we seek to build a solid conceptual basis for the project A1 through a comprehensive literature overview and expert interviews with practitioners.Module 2 comprehensively prepares the quantitative field study to explore drivers and consequences of quality of VOR delineated in Goal 2 and 3. For this purpose, Module 2 comprises the steps of determining the design of the field study (likely a multi-source survey study), developing measurement scales, especially, quality of the VOR process, and creating the surveys.Module 3 focuses on planning and executing the quantitative studies conceptualised in the previous module. Specifically, we will acquire participating companies, prepare the study, and ultimately execute the study.Module 4 comprises the validation and analysis of the collected data to test our hypotheses developed in module 3. To this end, in this module we will edit the data, analyse the data, and report the results.Eventually, in Module 5, we will discuss our analyses with the scientific community and publish the results.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants
• Co-Investigators: Professor Dr. Jan Wieseke; Professorin Dr. Nancy Viola Wünderlich