An empirical study of the use of five influence strategies by American companies in selling goods and services in Africa.

摘要

The problem. Recent theoretical propositions on sales effectiveness emphasize buyer-seller processes. However, the influence strategies firms use in their sales attempts have received little empirical attention especially with regard to the African market. The present study, therefore, examined the frequency of use of alliance, contact, home-government assistance, information, and ingratiation strategies by American companies selling project goods and services to African governments. The frequency of use of these influence strategies and the relationships between the reported frequency of use of each strategy with reported sales effectiveness were investigated.; Method. Data was collected through a mail survey. The survey questionnaire, was pilot tested and the results were used to enhance its clarity and content validity. It produced a Cronbach reliability coefficient alpha of.90.; Vice Presidents for International Marketing of a random sample of 250 American firms comprised the data source. A total of 114 usable responses were received.; The t-test, Pearson zero-order correlation, discriminant analysis, multiple regression, and one-way analysis of variance statistical procedures were used to analyse the data collected.; Results. The findings of the study indicated that: (1) In general, respondents for American firms reported using influence strategies about half of the time in their sales attempts. (2) The combined reported frequency of use of the five strategies was positively associated with sales effectiveness. (3) The reported frequency of use of the influence strategies provided satisfactory and significant discrimination between the group of firms which reported a 66% or higher sales success rate and the group which reported lower sales success. The overall percentage of "grouped" cases correctly classified was 84.21%. (4) The alliance and information strategies could predict sales effectiveness as well as the whole set of five variables initially selected for the study. (5) Firms which reported high sales success rates also reported a frequent use of influence strategies. The results suggested implications in the areas of sales strategy in Africa, sales force selection and training.