ABSTRACT
Sales contests (SCs) are a widely popular incentive used by restaurant organizations to increase check average and total revenue, amongst other goals and in a number of weakly-related guises. Sales contests are programs used to compensate and/or motivate salespersons on a shortterm basis to meet specific organizational objectives (Churchill, Ford & Walker, 1993; Futrell, 1981; Murphy & Sohi, 1995), and their use across several industries has increased at a rapid rate over the past two decades (Murphy, Dacin, & Ford, 2004). U.S. expenditures on sales contests totaled $4 billion in the 1980s, again doubling by the mid-1990s (Chrapek, 1989; Nolan & Alonzo, 1997: in Murphy, Dacin & Ford, 2004).
