Designing Optimal Sales Contests: A Theoretical Perspective

Sales contests are commonly used by firms as a short-term motivational device to increase salespeople's efforts. Conceptually, sales contests and piece-rate schemes, such as salary, commission, or quotas, differ in that in sales contests payment to salespeople is based on relative rather than a...

Ausführliche Beschreibung

Bibliographische Detailangaben
Veröffentlicht in:Marketing Science. - Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences. - 20(2001), 2, Seite 170-193
1. Verfasser: Kalra, Ajay (VerfasserIn)
Weitere Verfasser: Shi, Mengze
Format: Online-Aufsatz
Sprache:English
Veröffentlicht: 2001
Zugriff auf das übergeordnete Werk:Marketing Science
Schlagworte:Agency Theory Sales Contests Salesforce Compensation Economics Business Behavioral sciences
LEADER 01000caa a22002652 4500
001 JST056344376
003 DE-627
005 20240622022607.0
007 cr uuu---uuuuu
008 150324s2001 xx |||||o 00| ||eng c
035 |a (DE-627)JST056344376 
035 |a (JST)3181635 
040 |a DE-627  |b ger  |c DE-627  |e rakwb 
041 |a eng 
100 1 |a Kalra, Ajay  |e verfasserin  |4 aut 
245 1 0 |a Designing Optimal Sales Contests: A Theoretical Perspective 
264 1 |c 2001 
336 |a Text  |b txt  |2 rdacontent 
337 |a Computermedien  |b c  |2 rdamedia 
338 |a Online-Ressource  |b cr  |2 rdacarrier 
520 |a Sales contests are commonly used by firms as a short-term motivational device to increase salespeople's efforts. Conceptually, sales contests and piece-rate schemes, such as salary, commission, or quotas, differ in that in sales contests payment to salespeople is based on relative rather than absolute sales levels. Using the agency theoretic framework where the firm is risk neutral and the salespeople are risk averse, we examine how a firm should design an optimal contest to maximize its profit through stimulating salespeople's efforts. Specifically, we investigate how many salespeople should be given awards and how the reward should be allocated between the winners. Three commonly used sales contest formats are studied. In the first format, termed as Rank-Order Tournament, there are many winners and the amount of reward is based on relative rank achieved, with larger amounts awarded to higher ranks. We also examine two special cases of Rank-Ordered Tournament: a Multiple-Winners format, where the reward is shared equally, and a Winner-Take-All format, where a single winner gets the entire reward. We model salespeople's behavior by considering utility of the reward from achieving one of the winning ranks in the contest and assessing incremental chances of winning by exerting more effort. The analysis was done for two situations based on whether the total reward is large enough for salespeople to participate in the effort-maximizing sales contest or not. The analysis shows that factors impacting contest design include the salespeople's degree of risk aversion, number of salespeople competing in the contest, and degree of sales uncertainty (which reflects strength of the sales-effort relationship). The results show that salespeople exert lower effort when there are larger numbers of participants or when sales uncertainty is high. We find that the Rank-Order Tournament is superior to the Multiple-Winners contest format. In a Multiple-Winners format, the salesperson whose performance is just sufficient to win is better off than any of the other winners as he exerts the least effort to win but obtains as high a reward as any other winners. Specific recommendations on contest designs are obtained assuming that sales follow either a logistic or uniform distribution. Assuming that sales outcome is logistically distributed and the contest budget is high enough to ensure participation, our analysis shows that the total number of winners in a sales contest should not exceed half the number of the contestants. This result is due to the symmetric nature of the logistic distribution. Our analysis also indicates that the total number of winners should be increased and the spread decreased when salespeople are more risk averse. When salespeople are more risk averse, their marginal values for higher rewards become smaller. The spread should increase with ranks when rate of risk tolerance is high and decrease with ranks when the rate of risk tolerance is lower. In the extreme case of risk-neutral salespeople, the optimal design is a Winner-Take-All format. We also conclude that since the probability of winning the contest decreases with number of contestants, the optimal number of winners should increase and interrank spread decrease when there are a larger number of participants. If the firm does not allocate a large enough budget for salespeople to participate in the effort-maximizing sales contest, then the firm may increase the number of winners to more than half the sales-force. Increasing the number of winners and decreasing the spread are required to encourage the salespeople to participate, particularly when there are many participants who are risk averse. A counterintuitive result is that the number of winners should be reduced and the spread increased when sales uncertainty is high. Increasing sales uncertainty leads to lower equilibrium effort levels while keeping the expected utility of the contest rewards the same. Therefore, increased uncertainty results in higher participation incentive. The firm should thus relatively reduce the number of winners in high-uncertainty situations. Under the assumption of uniformly distributed sales, the recommendation is that a Winner-Take-All contest induces maximum efforts regardless of the level of risk aversion, number of players, or the degree of uncertainty. When the Winner-Take-All format does not meet the participation constraint, our analysis recommends offering a big reward to the top salesperson and a small reward to many other salespeople. The small reward should be just sufficient to ensure that all salespeople participate. Consistent with logistic distribution, the spread should decrease when salespeople are more risk averse or there are more players but should increase when sales uncertainty is larger. These results highlight that some of the conclusions drawn may be sensitive to distributional assumptions. 
540 |a Copyright 2001 Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences 
650 4 |a Agency Theory 
650 4 |a Sales Contests 
650 4 |a Salesforce Compensation 
650 4 |a Economics  |x Economic disciplines  |x Labor economics  |x Employment  |x Occupations  |x Service industry employees  |x Sales personnel 
650 4 |a Economics  |x Economic disciplines  |x Financial economics  |x Finance  |x Financial analysis  |x Risk management  |x Risk aversion 
650 4 |a Business  |x Business administration  |x Business management  |x Sales management  |x Sales distribution 
650 4 |a Business  |x Business administration  |x Corporate communications  |x External corporate communications  |x Marketing 
650 4 |a Economics  |x Microeconomics  |x Economic utility  |x Expected utility 
650 4 |a Business  |x Business operations  |x Sales operations  |x Sales volume 
650 4 |a Business  |x Business economics  |x Commercial production  |x Production resources  |x Resource management  |x Logistics  |x Logistics distribution 
650 4 |a Behavioral sciences  |x Anthropology  |x Applied anthropology  |x Cultural anthropology  |x Cultural customs  |x Awards 
650 4 |a Business  |x Business operations  |x Commerce  |x Sales  |x Conditional sales 
650 4 |a Business  |x Business administration  |x Business management  |x Sales management 
655 4 |a research-article 
700 1 |a Shi, Mengze  |e verfasserin  |4 aut 
773 0 8 |i Enthalten in  |t Marketing Science  |d Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences  |g 20(2001), 2, Seite 170-193  |w (DE-627)320627799  |w (DE-600)2023536-7  |x 1526548X  |7 nnns 
773 1 8 |g volume:20  |g year:2001  |g number:2  |g pages:170-193 
856 4 0 |u https://www.jstor.org/stable/3181635  |3 Volltext 
912 |a GBV_USEFLAG_A 
912 |a SYSFLAG_A 
912 |a GBV_JST 
912 |a GBV_ILN_11 
912 |a GBV_ILN_20 
912 |a GBV_ILN_22 
912 |a GBV_ILN_23 
912 |a GBV_ILN_24 
912 |a GBV_ILN_31 
912 |a GBV_ILN_32 
912 |a GBV_ILN_39 
912 |a GBV_ILN_40 
912 |a GBV_ILN_60 
912 |a GBV_ILN_62 
912 |a GBV_ILN_63 
912 |a GBV_ILN_65 
912 |a GBV_ILN_69 
912 |a GBV_ILN_70 
912 |a GBV_ILN_90 
912 |a GBV_ILN_95 
912 |a GBV_ILN_100 
912 |a GBV_ILN_110 
912 |a GBV_ILN_120 
912 |a GBV_ILN_152 
912 |a GBV_ILN_187 
912 |a GBV_ILN_224 
912 |a GBV_ILN_285 
912 |a GBV_ILN_374 
912 |a GBV_ILN_702 
912 |a GBV_ILN_2001 
912 |a GBV_ILN_2003 
912 |a GBV_ILN_2005 
912 |a GBV_ILN_2006 
912 |a GBV_ILN_2007 
912 |a GBV_ILN_2008 
912 |a GBV_ILN_2009 
912 |a GBV_ILN_2010 
912 |a GBV_ILN_2011 
912 |a GBV_ILN_2014 
912 |a GBV_ILN_2015 
912 |a GBV_ILN_2018 
912 |a GBV_ILN_2020 
912 |a GBV_ILN_2021 
912 |a GBV_ILN_2026 
912 |a GBV_ILN_2027 
912 |a GBV_ILN_2034 
912 |a GBV_ILN_2044 
912 |a GBV_ILN_2048 
912 |a GBV_ILN_2050 
912 |a GBV_ILN_2055 
912 |a GBV_ILN_2056 
912 |a GBV_ILN_2057 
912 |a GBV_ILN_2059 
912 |a GBV_ILN_2061 
912 |a GBV_ILN_2065 
912 |a GBV_ILN_2068 
912 |a GBV_ILN_2106 
912 |a GBV_ILN_2107 
912 |a GBV_ILN_2108 
912 |a GBV_ILN_2111 
912 |a GBV_ILN_2112 
912 |a GBV_ILN_2113 
912 |a GBV_ILN_2118 
912 |a GBV_ILN_2122 
912 |a GBV_ILN_2129 
912 |a GBV_ILN_2143 
912 |a GBV_ILN_2147 
912 |a GBV_ILN_2148 
912 |a GBV_ILN_2152 
912 |a GBV_ILN_2153 
912 |a GBV_ILN_2190 
912 |a GBV_ILN_2232 
912 |a GBV_ILN_2472 
912 |a GBV_ILN_2935 
912 |a GBV_ILN_2940 
912 |a GBV_ILN_2949 
912 |a GBV_ILN_2950 
912 |a GBV_ILN_4012 
912 |a GBV_ILN_4035 
912 |a GBV_ILN_4037 
912 |a GBV_ILN_4046 
912 |a GBV_ILN_4112 
912 |a GBV_ILN_4125 
912 |a GBV_ILN_4126 
912 |a GBV_ILN_4242 
912 |a GBV_ILN_4246 
912 |a GBV_ILN_4249 
912 |a GBV_ILN_4251 
912 |a GBV_ILN_4305 
912 |a GBV_ILN_4306 
912 |a GBV_ILN_4307 
912 |a GBV_ILN_4313 
912 |a GBV_ILN_4322 
912 |a GBV_ILN_4323 
912 |a GBV_ILN_4324 
912 |a GBV_ILN_4325 
912 |a GBV_ILN_4326 
912 |a GBV_ILN_4335 
912 |a GBV_ILN_4338 
912 |a GBV_ILN_4346 
912 |a GBV_ILN_4393 
912 |a GBV_ILN_4700 
951 |a AR 
952 |d 20  |j 2001  |e 2  |h 170-193