Today many selling organizations are reexamining and revising their philosophy for managing salespeople because of increase costs of hiring and maintaining a sales force. More than everm management is looking for ways to assist salespeople in becoming more productive and effective faster. One avenue for enhancing salespersons' performance is through improved sales training practices. improved sales training practices should help salespeople view training, and how sales training transcends to the job environment. Considering the need for greater understanding concerning salespeople's perceptions of sales training and assuming the influence of those perceptions on job performance and other outcomes, this study develops and executes an analysis of several proposed relationships among personal characteristics, job related characteristics, perceived training needs, sales training variables, and related outcomes. The program of research identifies and evaluates salespeople's attitudes toward sales training and specifies influences of those training perceptions on salesperson' behaviors and general attitudes. As well, a relationship between salespeople's transfer of training materials, their use, and individual performance are evaluated.

This dissertation deals with the decision-to-move process of elderly persons—from a marketer's perspective. The central problem addressed is the lack of empirical knowledge concerning the factors and influences associated with the information search process of elderly persons in making a residential move decision. The purpose was to investigate and understand the key factors and influences which are viewed as important by elderly individuals in their search for and use of information.

The issue of dimensions of quality has received very little attention in the marketing literature. This dissertation studies the impact selected individual dimensions of quality has on firm performance. The study examined the relation between product, service and image based dimensions of quality and firm performance. The performance measure utilized in this study was a firm's return on investment (ROI). Sample for the study included Strategic Business Units (SBUs) involved in the manufacture of consumer goods and industrial capital goods. A theoretical framework that details performance effects of selected variables was developed. Drawing upon previous research in Marketing, Management, Economics, and Strategic Planning, propositions and hypotheses were developed. The data required to test the hypotheses was obtained from the PIMS data base of the Strategic Planning Institute. Several GLM procedures including ANOVA, ANCOVA, and Multiple Comparison tests, such as SNK, Tukey and Bonferroni, were employed to test the various operational hypothesis. The results show that product and image based dimensions of quality impact RoT differentially for consumer goods and industrial capital goods. The extent of the difference depends on the order of market entry and the product's stage in the product life cycle. On the other hand, service based dimensions …

Because of the high and rapidly increasing cost of health care, wellness has become a significant issue for both health care practitioners and the general public. This research examines the issue of wellness and seeks to develop a model that identifies the factors that are most significant in explaining why people engage in wellness activities. A questionnaire was mailed to a sample (n = 499) randomly selected from the general population of the United States. Predictor variables are the demographic variables of age, income, education and gender together with the cognitive variables of self-actualization, benefits of wellness behavior, health locus of control and threat to health. Dependent variables are the health-seeking behaviors of exercise, stress management, nutrition, health responsibility and social support. Canonical correlation, t-tests, regression and analysis of variance are used to analyze the data. Chapter one presents two existing health models. The first presents prevention or threat to health and the second proposes self-actualization as motivating wellness behavior. The research model combines the two models. Chapter two presents relevant studies in the literature regarding use of multivariate models in consumer behavior, dimensions of wellness and empirical findings of wellness-related research. Chapter three presents the research hypotheses, research design …