In this paper we develop a model relating market share to average costs. We start with a theoretical model of the factors that affect the firm's average cost curve, partitioning these factors into (a) measurable firm and competitive environment characteristics, and (b) unobserved factors that...

One of the major responsibilities of the Editor and the Area Editor is to decide on the appropriateness of a submitted paper. As stated in prior editorials (Staelin 1996, 1997), four major criteria are used in making this determination: (1) Will the paper be of interest to our readers? (2) Is it...

A theory of salesforce compensation plans is presented where the sales of a product depend not only on the salesperson's effort but also on the uncertainty in the selling environment. The firm chooses a compensation plan to maximize its profit taking into account the salesperson's likely effort...

A commonly held belief has grocery and mass merchandise retailers gaining power relative to the upstream consumer package goods manufacturers. One of the major justifications for this belief is that manufacturers are now giving retailers more side payments such as trade allowances, slotting...

In this paper, we present a theory of salesforce compensation plans to provide insights into why it may be advantageous for a profit maximizing firm to offer members of its salesforce the opportunity to choose from a menu of compensation plans. Although such contractual arrangements are not...

This issue is all about managerial decision making, i.e., how managers go about making decisions and how these decisions can be improved via good marketing analyses. As such it differs somewhat from the regular issues of in that it contains no analytic models or papers that focus only on...

No abstract available

This paper provides an introduction to this Special Issue by a) providing a framework for evaluating the potential and actual success of marketing management support systems (MMSS), and b) briefly discussing how each paper in this Special Issue addresses the general topic of managerial decision...

No abstract available

The goal of this brief note is to provide the reader with an appreciation of how this paper was initially conceived, to state what I think are the paper's key insights, and to outline a few of the many challenges and opportunities that still exist in studying channel management issues.