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The principal purpose of this study is to examine the moderating influence of selling experience on the following two relationships – adaptive selling and job satisfaction and customer orientation and job satisfaction – using unionized salespeople as respondents. It also tests for the mediating role of adaptive selling in the customer orientation–job satisfaction relationship.

This paper uses data from a survey conducted on 208 pharmaceutical unionized salespeople from 46 pharmaceutical firms in India. The model was tested using structural equation modeling. Moderation hypotheses were estimated using process macro and the Johnson–Neyman technique.

The data fitted the model well. This research found that customer orientation drove adaptive selling behavior and job satisfaction, and that adaptive selling influenced job satisfaction (all positively); it was found that adaptive selling partially mediated the relationship between customer orientation and job satisfaction. Results revealed that job experience negatively moderated the adaptive selling behavior–job satisfaction and customer orientation–job satisfaction relationships.

The results show that pharma firms may hire young recruits and, importantly, measure their customer orientation and adaptive selling levels. For the purposes of training to enhance customer orientation and adaptive selling, pharma firms may send only their less experienced salespersons.

To the authors’ knowledge, this study could be the first to examine the interaction of job experience and customer-directed selling behaviors such as adaptive selling and customer orientation on job satisfaction. Moreover, this is possibly the only study in this domain that uses unionized salespeople in an emerging market (India).

In hypercompetitive markets, retail brands should fuel their sales employees’ to responsively serve customers. In connection, the study aims to unpack the direct and indirect, via psychological flourishing, the role of inclusive leadership in paving the path for retail salesperson adaptive selling behaviour. Additionally, the study also empirically investigates the moderating role of work centrality to offer critical insights for effective managerial interventions.

Drawing upon conservation of resource theory to test the nexuses of the model, time-lagged survey data were collected from 313 retail salespersons from the leading retail brands. Data were analyzed using the bootstrapping method.

Results revealed the direct positive association between inclusive leadership and adaptive selling behaviour and indirect association via psychological flourishing. Furthermore, the direct association between inclusive leadership and adaptive selling becomes more pronounced for employees high on work centrality.

Findings can help retail brands to enhance adaptive selling behaviour, which enables them to provide efficient solutions and gain sustainable competitive advantage.

The study offers several important contributions to the sales literature by establishing the direct and indirect link between inclusive leadership and adaptive selling via psychological flourishing. Moreover, the result of the interaction effect highlights the critical aspects of work centrality in the retail sales context.

This study investigated the effects of social capital on frontline bank employee's adaptive selling behavior via the psychological process. Frontline bank employees' positive social relationships enhance their perception of the work environment and encourage work engagement. With the multiple mediation model, both internal and external social capital have direct and indirect influence on the frontline bank employee's adaptive selling behavior.

Data for this study were collected from a cross-sectional sample of retail banking industry in Korea. Specifically, using two-step procedures, employees of financial service or insurance sales department in banks were selected and online survey questionnaires were distributed to them. Data from 330 employees were collected and analyzed.

The results of this study showed how social capital affects frontline bank employees' person–job fit as a cognitive psychological process, leading to work engagement as an emotional psychological process and, in turn, more adaptive selling behavior. Using multiple mediation analysis, the results showed that work engagement on its own exerts a mediating effect on social capital, whereas a person–job fit does not.

This study applied both aspects of the social capital concept by dividing it into internal and external social capital, and exploring each separately. This study examined the influence on psychological processes and behavioral response by distinguishing between the two forms of social capital. Second, this study expands the previous studies by introducing social capital as an antecedent factor of frontline bank employees' adaptive selling behavior. Finally, this study explains how frontline bank employees' relational resources (i.e. social capital) influence their emotional aspect (i.e. work engagement) and cognitive aspect (i.e. person–job fit), which ultimately influence performance-driven behavior (i.e. adaptive selling behavior).

This research showed the importance of hiring frontline bank employees with excellent social capital capabilities. Furthermore, this study underscored the fact that organizations require preparing and providing practical management methods that can improve the social capital of their current frontline employees. Last, organization need to design the job in a way that innately improves frontline employees' social capital. Therefore, these jobs provide many opportunities for frontline bank employees to use their ability to build relationships in their interactions with customers and make practical decisions to achieve job performance.

This study improved our understanding regarding the importance of employees' social capital by revealing the psychological process of how frontline bank employees' social capital affects adaptive selling behavior. Second, this study expands on the literature by introducing internal and external social capital as an antecedent factor affecting the adaptive selling behavior of frontline bank employees. Furthermore, this study advances understanding on the manner in which relational resources of frontline bank employees (i.e. social capital) influence the emotional (i.e. work engagement) as well as the cognitive aspects (i.e. person–job fit), which ultimately influence performance-driven behavior (i.e. adaptive selling behavior).

Drawing on the social exchange theory, this study focuses on the impact of perceived organizational support (POS) and perceived supervisor support (PSS) on employees' adaptive (selling) behavior in a personal selling context. As part of the support-adaptive behavior relationship, the authors also explore the mediating role of psychological empowerment and the moderating role of customer orientation (CO).

Data were collected from 200 salespeople from the financial and pharmaceutical sectors in Turkey. Hypotheses were tested with hierarchical multiple regressions and hierarchical moderated regressions.

Supported salespeople feel more empowered in their jobs and show adaptive (selling) behavior. Our results also show that the impact of support on adaptive selling behavior through empowerment is stronger for salespeople with low CO.

This study has two limitations: the generalizability of its findings and cross-sectional design. Still, it significantly contributes to support, empowerment and adaptive behavior literature.

By creating a supportive work environment and by training their managers to improve their support skills, organizations boost their employees' adaptability. Both of these support practices motivate employees to use their discretion in sales situations. Organizations should also evaluate and manage their employees' level of CO by conducting company surveys and by increasing top management communication.

This study tests the mediating role of psychological empowerment on the relationship between POS, PSS and adaptive behavior in the understudied personal selling context. The authors also test the moderating role of CO in the proposed model.

The current study aims to empirically examine the impact of formal salesforce control systems on salespeople and customer behavior.

Data are collected from 704 salespeople and their respective visiting customers (704) in Ghana. The suggested hypotheses are tested through the structural equation (SEM) modeling technique.

The study results show that all three formal control mechanisms have positive and significant effects on customer-directed problem-solving and adaptive selling behaviors. Similarly, the study finds that salespeople's customer-directed problem-solving behavior increases, respectively, customer-directed opportunism and relationship continuity. Adaptive selling behavior also has significant positive effects on both customer-directed opportunism and relationship continuity, respectively.

The study offers practical and theoretical insights into understanding salesforce control dynamics, customer-directed opportunism, adaptive selling behavior, customer-directed problem-solving behavior and continuity of relationships. The results also have significant consequences for sales organizations as they can help sales managers decide on the best form of salesforce control systems to deploy.

The current research demonstrates how control mechanisms can influence both adaptive selling and customer-directed problem-solving behaviors and how these could generate both customer-directed opportunism and relationship continuity.

This paper aims to assess the effect of adaptive selling behavior on customer outcomes, mutual outcomes and salesperson outcomes.

The respondents were salespeople and customers in selected door-to-door cosmetics companies in South Korea. A questionnaire was used to collect the data. Structural equation modeling was used to analyze the data in this study.

Findings show that adaptive selling behavior positively affects customer satisfaction, customer loyalty, sales performance, job satisfaction and relationship quality. These findings suggest that adaptive selling is crucial for the firm's survival depending on the industry and the product. Additionally, unlike previous studies, the authors use salespeople's self-reporting responses and customer-reporting of salespeople, which further enhances the richness and uniqueness of the results.

Studies investigating mutual outcomes of adaptive selling behavior are scarce. The study also emphasizes that adaptive selling behavior enhances salesperson outcomes and customer outcomes and primarily uses dyadic data between door-to-door salespeople and their customers, which is not very common.

This study aims to draw on the categorization theory to explore the mediating role of customer qualification skills in explaining how social media use in sales contributes to salespeople’s adaptive selling behaviors to achieve high sales performance in export selling. The study also integrates network effect theory and social linguistics theory to identify the specific social media platform (Facebook versus non-Facebook) and the characteristics of salespeople in terms of English language proficiency, which play a facilitating role in promoting the effectiveness of social media use in export sales.

The sampling frame of the research is a list of Chinese export salespersons obtained on the FOB Business Forum website. Survey data were obtained from 873 Chinese export salespeople. Partial least squares structural equation modeling was performed to analyze the data.

Social media use in sales is associated positively with customer qualification skills and adaptive selling behaviors. Moreover, the results revealed a partial mediating effect of customer qualification skills on the positive impact of social media use in sales on adaptive selling behaviors. The moderating effect analysis found that the positive association between social media use in sales and customer qualification skills was stronger in export salespeople who used Facebook and had mastered a high level of English language proficiency.

This study provides new findings, based on data collected from salespeople in Mainland China, that support the effectiveness of social media use in an export sales context. Moreover, the study advances prior research by showing that the effectiveness of social media use still depends on the type of social media used and the English language proficiency of the salespeople.

This research examined the relationships between improvisational behavior, adaptive selling behavior and sales performance of direct sellers in Thailand. This research also investigated whether these relationships are moderated by the degree of challenge orientation and sellers' knowledge about the products.

The data were collected through a survey with sellers from a subsidiary of a multinational corporation located in Bangkok, Thailand (n = 172). Partial least squares–structural equation modeling was used to analyze the data.

Results from data analysis revealed positive relationships between improvisational behavior, adaptive selling behavior and sales performance. The relationship between improvisational behavior and adaptive selling behavior, as well as the relationship between adaptive selling behavior and sales performance, significantly depended on the degree of challenge orientation and the sellers' knowledge about the products.

The data were collected using self-report measures; the sample was sellers from a single sales organization, and cross-sectional data were used for the analysis. Overall, this study is the exploratory research that does not intend to prove the causal effect of improvisational behavior, but rather to provide new insight on some conditional factors that influence its effectiveness.

It is essential for sales organizations to ensure that their sales force has adequate improvisational skills to handle sales adaptations effectively during unexpected sales situations. Some training may be offered to the sales force to develop these imperative improvisational skills.

The results regarding the moderating effect of challenge orientation and product knowledge provided additional insight to prior research about the potential conditions that influence the effectiveness of improvisational behavior and adaptive selling behaviors.

The purpose of the study is to test the effect of relationship managerial behavior (i.e. managerial coaching) on frontline employee performance (i.e. sales performance) and the mediating effect of employee's relationship behaviors (i.e. customer orientation and adaptive selling) in a Chinese banking environment.

Data were collected using a survey from 242 frontline employees working at a large commercial bank in Dalian (China). Measures on managerial coaching, customer orientation, adaptive selling and sales performance were adapted from the literature. Data were analyzed using structural equation modeling in AMOS 26.

Results indicate that (1) managerial coaching positively affects employee customer orientation, (2) employee customer orientation positively affects employee adaptive selling behavior and (3) adaptive selling behavior positively affects sales performance. Bootstrap analysis confirmed the significance and stability of all the direct paths (suggesting that every mediator fully mediates the effect of its antecedent on the criterion) but none of the indirect paths found support (full mediation model).

The study makes a contribution to the nomological network of managerial coaching by introducing a construct that has not been used previously (i.e. employee adaptive selling behavior) and testing its relevance in a commercial setting.

The results suggest that (1) managerial coaching is a central managerial behavior for companies that would like to implement a relationship marketing strategy because it helps promote specific employee relationship behaviors like customer orientation and adaptive selling, (2) there seems to be little cultural differences in the banking industry between the Chinese and the Western banks, suggesting that coaching and other management tools can be transferable from one culture to the other and (3) that coaching is an effective tool to help employees achieve higher sales performance.

The paper contributes to the literature on the use of managerial coaching in commercial areas to increase frontline employee relationships behaviors. The identification of adaptive selling as a mediator is an original contribution because it has received little attention in scientific research. Additionally, the use of a Chinese sample of bank employees responds to recent call for more research in cross-cultural settings.

This study aims to investigate salespersons’ self-monitoring and its effect on adaptive selling behavior. As salespeople are constantly facing different customers with various needs and want and engaging in a different sales situation, salespeople must deploy their inner capabilities in practicing adaptive selling behavior during and across sales interactions. This study also investigates the impact of salesperson’s intrapersonal leadership – where leadership stems from the individuals with the purpose to influence oneself.

Authors draw on the social cognitive theory of self-regulation to develop our model and examine the relationship between self-monitoring, thought self-leadership and adaptive selling behavior. We empirically test the model using data from 335 pharmaceutical salespeople working across several countries in Asia.

The results support the role of self-monitoring and thought self-leadership as antecedents to adaptive selling. Further, the results suggest that self-monitoring positively moderates the relationship between thought self-leadership and adaptive selling behavior. In light of these results, we explore implications and limitations and conclude by suggesting directions for further research.

The sampling method used was convenience sampling, which may limit the theoretical generalization of our results across all emerging markets. Moreover, this study examines the direct impact of self-management mechanism on adaptive selling behavior and the way it interacts with salesperson's thought self-leadership to strengthen adaptive selling behavior. However, the research model does not include organization-level drivers.

This study makes an important and original contribution to sales literature by demonstrating the direct and interaction effects of self-monitoring mechanism on a critical component of a business to business sales process, adaptive selling behavior. Results from this study highlight the critical importance of cognitive processes that drives positive selling behavior.