In the last week of September, the German Direct Selling Association (BDD) held this year's Direct Selling Congress at Andel's Vienna House in Berlin. One of the many items on the program of the two-day congress was the presentation of the Science Awards. Here, Michael Gerke from the Chair of Marketing Management was honored with the €1,500 prize in the "Best Paper" category for an essay entitled "Direct Selling Distributor Turnover in Europe: Detecting Potential Leavers Across Countries." The article, which is highly relevant in times of the "War for Talent", allows the identification of salesperson with an intention to leave their organization across eleven different European countries. In addition, the article provides information on the factors that play a major role in the development of the salespersons’ propensity to leave. The study was conducted in collaboration with Professor Anne Coughlan (Northwestern University), Professor Leo Paas (University of Auckland) and Professor Manfred Krafft.

Professor Krafft, who also attended the congress, was delighted that after 2019 the Science Award has once again found its way to Münster to the Chair of Marketing Management. The award was presented by the chairwoman of the BDD, Elke Kopp, and the managing director of the BDD, Jochen Clausnitzer. The selection of the award winners was made by the scientific advisory board of the BDD, chaired by Professor Florian Kraus of the University of Mannheim.

In addition to the presentation of the award, the Chair of Marketing Management in the person of Professor Manfred Krafft and Michael Gerke organized another program item of the congress with a so-called "BDD Session". In this session, the two presented the most important results of the study to the audience, which was made up of executives from the member companies, and then discussed these findings with the audience.