Not much is known about the primary drivers of performance in franchising systems. With some notable exceptions, much of the franchising literature on performance related issues has focused on either contrasting failure rates of independent small businesses and entrepreneurs with those of...

In this paper, we investigate the use of horizontal distribution alliances (HDAs) in the international airline industry. Airlines enter these alliances to effectively meet the needs of passengers in new and expanding markets. We apply transaction cost analysis (TCA) to develop a conceptual...

Direct Selling: A Global and Social Business Model is a collective project from eight academics and practitioners who have dedicated much of their careers to understanding direct selling as both a go-to-market strategy and a channel of distribution and to capturing the people who are the...

The literature on chief executive officers (CEOs) established that economics and sociological rationales are both essential to understand the level and structure of CEOs' compensation. Our thesis is that internal "transaction costs" or frictions override strictly economic criteria to determine...

Several papers in the recent marketing literature have suggested that delegation in distribution (e.g., the use of independent middlemen) helps manufacturers to precommit strategically to profit-enhancing competitive actions. Further, the literature suggests that the profitability of such...

We study a channel relationship in which manufacturer(s) use independent sales representatives (rep firms), which employ salespeople to do the actual selling. We show that commission-only payments by manufacturers to rep firms lead to suboptimal outcomes for the manufacturer relative to those...

This paper discusses recent advances in the study of salesforce motivation and compensation. Special emphasis is given to quantitative approaches from the economics, finance, and marketing literatures. The paper summarizes the findings in this analytical work in the context of some examples of...