Multi-dimensional Salesforce Compensation with Negotiated Prices

56 Pages Posted: 28 Mar 2022 Last revised: 20 Jun 2022

See all articles by Pranav Jindal

Pranav Jindal

Indian School of Business

Minkyung Kim

Carnegie Mellon University - David A. Tepper School of Business

Peter Newberry

University of Georgia - C. Herman and Mary Virginia Terry College of Business - Department of Economics

Date Written: June 2022

Abstract

In settings where pricing is delegated to salespeople, firms may provide the salespeople incentives to not only sell more, but to do so at higher prices. In this paper, we study the relative importance of sales and pricing incentives, and quantify the profitability of different aspects of the pricing incentives. Utilizing data from a large durable goods retailer in the U.S., we outline and estimate a structural model of a multi-tasking salesforce where a salesperson jointly makes selling and pricing decisions (through negotiation) for multiple product types. The overall disutility from negotiating is comparable to that from selling, which makes salesperson effort allocation across selling and negotiating under each contract design nontrivial. Eliminating pricing (sales) incentives lowers the retailer's profit by 31% (8%) pointing to the relative importance of the pricing incentives. Additionally, eliminating different aspects of the pricing incentives, which vary in the extent to which they incentivize higher markups, results in lower profits for the retailer. Finally, we find that the salesperson's ability to reallocate effort across selling and negotiating hurts the retailer, but a move to fixed pricing, which eliminates negotiation effort completely, further lowers the retailer's profits.

Keywords: salesforce compensation, bargaining, price delegation, pricing, multitasking

JEL Classification: D4, C7, L1, J24

Suggested Citation

Jindal, Pranav and Kim, Minkyung and Newberry, Peter, Multi-dimensional Salesforce Compensation with Negotiated Prices (June 2022). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=4046168 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.4046168

Pranav Jindal (Contact Author)

Indian School of Business ( email )

Gachibowli
Hyderabad, 500032
India

Minkyung Kim

Carnegie Mellon University - David A. Tepper School of Business ( email )

5000 Forbes Avenue
Pittsburgh, PA 15213-3890
United States

Peter Newberry

University of Georgia - C. Herman and Mary Virginia Terry College of Business - Department of Economics ( email )

Athens, GA 30602-6254
United States

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