Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/247420 
Year of Publication: 
2021
Series/Report no.: 
Bank of Canada Staff Working Paper No. 2021-40
Publisher: 
Bank of Canada, Ottawa
Abstract: 
Salespeople are widely employed in many industries and are perceived as an effective marketing strategy. However, due to lack of field data, direct empirical evidence on the effectiveness of salespeople is scarce. In this paper, leveraging a unique retail sales data set from a leading Chinese cold-drink manufacturer and information on its implemented salespeople assignment rule, we measure the causal effect of salespeople on product revenue. Our estimation strategy features a non-linear control function approach to address the endogeneity problem in salespeople assignment by exploiting the manufacturer's internal allocation rules. Our results show that the marginal effect of the first salesperson is 16.2 percent and that of the second is 10.6 percent. We provide some evidence on the incentive issues caused by the manufacturer's compensation plan as a possible explanation for the decreasing effect of an additional salesperson.
Subjects: 
Labour markets
Service sector
JEL: 
L81
M3
M5
Persistent Identifier of the first edition: 
Document Type: 
Working Paper

Files in This Item:
File
Size





Items in EconStor are protected by copyright, with all rights reserved, unless otherwise indicated.