Thought leaders and emerging scholars from around the world gathered at the University of Missouri for an enriching two days of collaborative learning and innovation. The inaugural Marketing Strategy Consortium brought together 44 fellows representing six countries, as well as doctoral faculty and researchers from leading universities from across North America and Europe. During the opening event, Professor Krafft gave a talk on the success factors in marketing strategy research and introduced the audience to his thoughts about “rigor, relevance, and responsibility”. Subsequently, Julian Allendorf presented a study on online shopping cart abandonment. The study which is joint research with Manfred Krafft and Mirja Kroschke, investigates motives and countermeasures of this phenomenon. Both talks were well received by the audience that also provided valuable feedback on the presented research.

Directly after this event, the 6th Enhancing Sales Force Productivity-Conference which was chaired by Kissan Joseph (Kansas), Murali Mantrala and Srinath Gopalakrishna (both Missouri) as well as Manfred Krafft took place. In total, 40 renewed academics and emerging scholars met at the Trulaske College of Business to discuss current topics in sales management research. The MCM showed also a strong presence during this conference. In a session on the efficiency of sales management, led by Professor Krafft, he introduced the audience to a current project on the topic value-creating sales in B2B, which recently received a grant from the German Research Foundation (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft). On the second conference day, Julian Allendorf presented a study on role conflicts in sales management and discussed the determinants and consequences as well as differences between direct selling and traditional sales.