Delegating slotting allowance authority to the sales force

Slotting allowances are payments manufacturers make to retailers in exchange for product distribution. An important question manufacturers face is whether their salespeople should have the authority to allocate these payments and, if so, what are the implications of doing so. Unfortunately, although slotting allowances have been investigated in the literature, there is little guidance on these issues. Providing such guidance is important because slotting allowances are both costly to manufacturers and frequently demanded by retailers. Therefore, we introduce slotting allowance authority into the literature and suggest that it is positively related to customer loyalty toward the salesperson; however, this relationship largely depends on a customer's relationship motivation. Specifically, we offer a contemporary view of customer motivation by demonstrating that the relationship between slotting allowance authority and customer loyalty is less and more positive with increasing levels of intrinsic relationship motivation and extrinsic relationship motivation, respectively. Moreover, our results indicate a conditional process model whereby slotting allowance authority impacts sales growth through customer loyalty conditioned upon intrinsic- and extrinsic relationship motivations.