DOI: 10.1509/jmr.11.0485

ference in Boston. They are grateful to the executives of the focal firm (who wish to remain anonymous) for providing the data and for their help-ful discussions. This article is based on the first author’s doctoral disserta-tion at the University of Minnesota. The first two authors contributed equally and are listed alphabetically. Jean-Pierre Dubé served as associate editor for this article. SUNIL KISHORE, RAGHUNATH SINGH RAO, OM NARASIMHAN, and GEORGE JOHN* Quota-based bonuses and commissions are the two most common incentive compensation plans. The authors uncover differential effects of these plans from a natural field-based experiment featuring 14,000 monthly observations over three years from 458 sales territories of a pharmaceutical firm that switched from a bonus plan to an equivalent commission plan. The intervention led to significant sales productivity improvement; this effect was heterogeneous across ability deciles, wit