Rate My Professor Ricky Fergurson

J. Ricky Fergurson is an Assistant Professor of Marketing in the Department of Marketing at Middle Tennessee State University, within the Jennings A. Jones College of Business. He contributes to the Center for Professional Selling and serves as Faculty Advisor for the MTSU Society for Professional Selling. Before transitioning to academia, Fergurson amassed over 25 years of hands-on experience in sales, sales management, and sales training, equipping him with deep practical knowledge that enriches his academic contributions in teaching and research.

Fergurson's research specializes in sales dynamics, encompassing salesperson attributes influencing consumer perceptions, mechanisms to mitigate salesperson turnover intentions through organizational market orientation and selective hiring using a job demand-resources framework, AI technology's role in shaping consumer behavior during retail interactions, and sales teams' functions as stakeholder and knowledge managers from a service-ecosystem and co-creation viewpoint. His peer-reviewed publications feature in leading outlets including the Journal of Consumer Behaviour, Journal of Consumer Marketing, Journal of Business-to-Business Marketing, European Journal of Marketing, Journal of Marketing Education, Journal of Marketing Analytics, and Journal of Managerial Issues. Prominent works include "Exploring AI technology and consumer behavior in retail interactions" (2024, co-authored with M. Petrescu, A.S. Krishen, and J.T. Gironda), "Salesperson attributes that influence consumer perceptions of sales interactions" (2021, with J.T. Gironda and M. Petrescu), "Reducing salesperson turnover intentions via organizational market orientation and selective hiring: A job demand-resources approach" (2022, with D.E. Fleming, A.B. Artis, E.G. Harris, and M.A. Askew), "Salespeople and teams as stakeholder and knowledge managers: a service-ecosystem, co-creation, crossing-points perspective on key outcomes" (2024, with C.R. Plouffe et al.), "Does empathy matter? An exploratory study of class-transition satisfaction in unplanned course interruptions" (2022, with L. Munoz, E.G. Harris, and D. Fleming), and "Self-image congruence: an empirical look at consumer behavior in door-to-door sales" (2017). He also guest-edited an introduction to a special issue on data-driven decision making via sales analytics (Journal of Marketing Analytics, 2020). Fergurson earned a Ph.D. in Marketing and maintains memberships in the American Marketing Association and the Academy of Marketing Science.