個案資料

Advantage Food & Beverage (AF&B), a sales and service vending machine company, has added an Avanti kiosk division and hired a sales representative to devote all their time to selling the kiosk service to businesses within a specific geographic market. In the first year of the kiosk operation, AF&B hired and fired three sales representatives while acquiring seven Avanti customers. A management review uncovered issues with the selling process and the lack of presentations to prospective customers. AF&B’s owner pondered the relationship between the personal selling process and AF&B’s current compensation approach for sales representatives. How could AF&B’s compensation approach be changed to meet senior management’s new emphasis on presentations, and how would the various options impact AF&B’s profit and loss statement?

The case can be used at the end of a marketing principles course or as part of a sales course. The case requires students to understand the six steps associated with the personal selling process, and to prescribe it to a specific selling situation. The dilemma faced by the owner highlights a process decision for a new market. While some computation could be used to aid in the decision process, students should be pushed to see a relationship between employee activity and management’s goals. This case asks students to: <ul><li>Explain and discuss a business situation in the context of the personal selling process.</li><li>Compute a compensation structure and apply it to the personal selling process. Using basic goal-setting theory, suggest alternative packages to link rewards to performance outcomes consistent with company goals. </li><li>Perform quantitative computations to analyze costs and benefits of each alternative and provide estimated figures to select appropriate alternatives. </li><li>Evaluate and assess costs, benefits and other factors, and apply knowledge and skills to recommend a course of action for the decision situation.</li></ul>

• Sales
• selling process
• United States