Andrew Hennis2:00 PM SectionSummary of Academic Research ArticleMay 7, 2014Learning From Peers: Knowledge Transfer and Sales Force Productivity GrowthTat Y. Chan, Jia Li, and Lamar PiercePublished: October 2012 into The Marketing Science JournalThis research paper successfully explains how peers in the workplace can impact the productivity of fellow sales people. This particular paper uses an example of selling cosmetics in a department store. It was found that peer-based learning is much more helpful and efficient than learning by doing for most employees. Additionally employees forgot a lot less information when it was taught to them by their peers and it also increases the long-term productivity growth of new sales people.Next the article goes into more specifics on this idea and situation. According to the text it is incredibly important for new sales people to work with very product ...view middle of the document...
After this the text begins to discuss the relationship between peer-based learning and compensation. This study showed that it is likely that rewards and other incentives significantly impact a salesperson effort towards both learning, and teaching. In general employees that were paid more and given more rewards were more likely to be better learners as well as better teachers or mentors to new employees. The paper then goes on to argue the point that most peer-based learning topics included, adopting work ethic, gaining loyal customers, and customer relations.After describing peer- based learning in more specific detail and more examples, the paper begins to discuss future research that could be done and predictions for what might be discovered. The text states that future research should attempt to explore how different workplace characteristics and job tasks can impact the relationship between peer-based learning and learning by doing. The researches expect that learning by doing will be the more important learning approach in jobs that are more standardized where speed and efficiency are the primary goal. Additionally it is noted that improving technology has made almost all learning processes much easier and it is expected that this will continue until almost all learning will be technology based.As the research paper begins to end the authors wrap up the main ideas and points discussed throughout the article. They explain how sales are the backbone of almost all businesses meaning your sales employees are incredibly important and it is very beneficial to know how they learn the best and most quickly. After this it is stated that after their research their final results conclude that sales people are very likely to influence the productivity of other salespeople when they are working closely together and are competing over the same customers. This means that is critical for mangers to put a strong emphasis on team cohesiveness which can have a strong effect on employee turnover as well as overall firm performance.Link to Article: http://apps.olin.wustl.edu/faculty/pierce/learningpost.pdf
