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Even though there has been anecdotal evidence regarding the use of ingratiation techniques in retail salesperson-shopper interactions, surprisingly, there has been limited research on the nature of these ingratiatory techniques and their impact on consumers’ perceptions and attitudes. The research reported here was conducted to determine the extent to which different ingratiation techniques that have been identified as techniques used in non-retailing domains are also used by retail salespersons in salesperson-shopper interactions. In addition, it sought to assess whether there are additional ingratiation techniques used by retail salespersons in salesperson-shopper interactions that have not been identified in existing ingratiation literature. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

Two studies, drawing on research on ingratiation in other domains, were conducted in pursuit of realising the purpose. Study 1 was a survey involving a sample of 282 participants, which yielded 267 useable critical incident reports and 283 discrete examples of ingratiatory behaviours. Participants responded to various questions including a critical incident question. Cross-tabulations were, for the main part, used in assessing responses. A second survey involving 158 participants was undertaken as a verification study. This Study 2 yielded 144 useable responses.

Based on a critical incident technique (CIT), other enhancement: compliment and praise was the ingratiation technique most frequently cited by participants in the first sample, with product-customer enhancement being second and favour-rendering third. The Study 2 confirmed other enhancement: compliment and praise and product-customer enhancement as the top two techniques. Four new categories of ingratiatory behaviours emerged in retail salesperson-shopper interactions, and many of the ingratiatory behaviours previously identified in non-retailing contexts also exist in this retailing context.

Both samples are US samples, and the method used was the CIT. Though the US samples are appropriate for this study, the study could be extended to other groups and across cultures, to see whether cultural differences in the use of, and consumer responses to, ingratiation techniques exist. The study also did not look at the retail salespeople’s perspectives regarding the use of these techniques. Hence further research should address dyadic interpretations of a single ingratiatory encounter; and efforts should also be made to assess how consumers respond to ingratiation in retailing.

The studies result in a classification of the influence techniques used most often in retail settings in the USA. Retailers should be aware that customers may, therefore, expect certain kinds of influence tactics and may not respond in the same way when there is a departure from a “customary” influence tactic.

Not much research has explored the different kinds of ingratiation techniques used in retail contexts; nor has the stream of research sought to categorise them.

The purpose of present study is to examine the influence of impression management (IM) tactics (e.g. ingratiation) applied in job application letters on perceived qualifications and hiring recommendations. The study aims to build on recent research done in the interview context, by studying IM specifically in the written form pertaining to a job application.

Data were gathered from 94 respondents asked to evaluate the job application letters of applicants for a mentoring program. IM was manipulated through the cover letter, such that, each subject received five cover letters, four of which engaged in ingratiation and one that had no ingratiation. Participants were required to evaluate the applicants' qualifications and make selection decisions.

The results of the study were consistent with those of the interview context. More specifically, ingratiation led to significantly higher ratings of applicants, and self‐focused tactics were more effective than other‐focused tactics.

The findings of this research conveyed that most of the IM tactics significantly improve recruiters' evaluations of the applicants. Still, future research needs to further investigate this relationship in order to understand the specific nature of the IM tactics and develop a deeper understanding of the underlying processes that cause IM tactics to have an impact on recruiters' judgments.

The present study highlights the need for greater understanding of how IM tactics may influence the decisions of employers who rely on written applications, or a combination of job application letters and interviews. Therefore, employers need to be aware of the use of IM in written applications and emphasize the importance of interviews in the selection process.

Existing research has been concerned with how IM tactics influence interview outcomes and has overlooked how these same IM tactics may be used in job application letters to influence selection decisions. This study addresses this gap by focusing on the job application letter as a means of conveying and managing impressions by candidates.

This article examines the place of organizational politics in general and ingratiation specifically as a tactic in which there is an attempt by individuals to increase their attractiveness and upward influence in the eyes of other organizational members (management). Four common tactics of ingratiators were identified: other enhancement, rendering favors, opinion conformity and self‐presentation. Suggests that ingratiation is influenced by individual variables such as: Machiavellianism, locus of control and work task uniqueness. Furthermore, situational variables affect this political behavior There were mixed research results on the impact of ingratiation on further career success. Some recent research concluded that this tactic has little or no effect on extrinsic and intrinsic rewards available to the individual.

This study examines how team-level mediating mechanisms (i.e. team psychological safety and team helping behaviour) facilitate the relationship between employees' ingratiation and performance ratings.

The data were collected from 180 customer service teams working in Pakistan's hospitality industry through multiple sources using a paper and pencil questionnaire.

The multi-level structural equation modelling results showed that team psychological safety and helping behaviour fully mediated the relationship between ingratiation and performance ratings.

The study has offered some implications for theory and practices.

This study showed that ingratiation might be a helpful impression management tool within a team context. Such an influence technique nurtures a psychologically safe climate and encourages peers to help each other perform mutual tasks within the hospitality context.

Interest in the nature of influence attempts in the performance evaluation process has increased in recent years. Researchers have conducted a number of important and revealing cross‐sectional investigations, but there remains virtually no longitudinal work in this area. The present study attempted to address this need by conducting a multi‐period investigation of influence tactics use and affect that addressed three questions: (1) Are individuals consistent in their use of influence tactics across evaluation periods? (2) Are prior‐period performance ratings reflected in subsequent influence tactic use? (3) What role does affect, both supervisor and subordinate, play in this process? A latent variable structural model was tested using longitudinal data from managers and employees of food services units. Our results indicated that there is a cycle of continued influence tactic use across time periods, performance ratings help to determine subsequent tactic use, and both supervisor and subordinate affect play a role in the influence‐evaluation process. Implications of these results and directions for future research are discussed.

The purpose of these studies was to investigate how the repeated use of impression management (IM) tactics is related to supervisor perceptions in newly formed supervisor-subordinate dyads.

Two studies were conducted – a lab study in which participants evaluated a confederate who performed an accounting task while using different types of IM across five trials, and a field study examining the IM tactics of new employees and their supervisors' ratings of likability and performance at two points in time.

In the lab study, the repeated use of ingratiation had an increasingly positive effect on performance ratings, whereas repeated apologies had an increasingly negative effect on evaluations of performance. The influence of IM tactics on ratings of subordinate likability did not change with repeated use. In the field study, subordinates' use of apologies and justifications was more strongly associated with supervisor evaluations of likability and performance in earlier stages of their relationship.

Employees need to be mindful that IM tactics may vary in their effectiveness depending on the timing and frequency of their use. Furthermore, supervisors should consider the initial influence that IM has on their ability to objectively evaluate new subordinates.

This research is unique in that it examined how the repeated use of both assertive (i.e. ingratiation and self-promotion) and defensive (i.e. apologies and justifications) IM tactics are related to both evaluations of likability and performance ratings at multiple points in time.

The aim of this study is to examine the influence of workplace ostracism on deviant behaviour and testified the mediating roles of organisational identification, burnout and organisation-based self-esteem (OBSE) by using a parallel mediation model. Then, the moderating role of ingratiation in the interrelation between ostracism, the mediators and deviant behaviour is examined.

A survey questionnaire was used to collect data from nurses working in public sector hospitals in Pakistan. Nursing context is appropriate for the study because this occupation involves a greater extent of social interaction among peer nurses, doctors and administration in the provision of health services. A total of 417 nurses provided complete responses, and the study hypotheses were tested using the partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM).

The study findings show that ostracism is positively related to deviant behaviour of nurses, indicating that workplace ostracism is an important predictor of deviant behaviour. Ostracised nurses experienced higher job burnouts and low OBSE as well as organisational identification. Results also show that ostracism promotes deviant behaviour by reducing OBSE and organisational identification. Moreover, results provide evidence that high ingratiation overcomes the detrimental effects of ostracism on both deviant behaviour and mediators.

The present study integrates the literature on ostracism and its attitudinal and behavioural outcomes and submits that ostracism negatively affects the attitudes of victims which in turn results in negative behavioural outcomes (i.e. deviant behaviour). This study also suggests ingratiation as a tactic to control the negative effects of ostracism.

Despite the detrimental effects of supervisor knowledge hiding on employees and organizations, little research has focused on how subordinates cope with it. Drawing on the impression management theory, this study proposes a mediated moderation model to explain who and how cope with supervisor knowledge hiding.

Using a sample of 340 full-time participants in various organizations and industries in China, the proposed model was tested using ordinary least squares regression with the PROCESS 3.5.

The results support the mediated moderation model, indicating that proactive subordinates are motivated to manage their impression towards supervisors and engage in upward ingratiation to cope with supervisor knowledge hiding. In contrast, subordinates with low level of proactive personality trait have less impression management motive and engage in fewer upward ingratiatory behaviors.

Based on the impression management theory, the current paper contributes to the literature on supervisor knowledge hiding by expanding the consequences of supervisor knowledge hiding, identifying a boundary condition of supervisor knowledge hiding on subordinate’s subsequent behaviors and enriching the mechanism underlying the effect of supervisor knowledge hiding with proactive personality.

By combining the influence tactics and team development literatures, this paper aims to propose a new team-level approach to influence tactics in self-managed teams and a temporal account of the extent to which team-level influence tactics are associated with team performance as a dynamic process.

Using 75 self-managed teams, we examined the relationship between the proportion of team members who tend to use each influence tactic to a high degree and team performance at initial versus advanced stages of team development.

Results demonstrated at initial stages of team development, a high proportion of team members who tend to use assertiveness was detrimental to team performance, whereas at advanced stages of team development, a high proportion of team members tending to use ingratiation was detrimental, while rationality was positively associated with team performance. Additionally, a Fuzzy Qualitative Comparative Analysis showed that at advanced stages of team development, tactics configuration matters.

This study sets the stage for a team-level theory of influence tactics by examining the relationship between the proportion of team members who tend to use influence tactics to a high degree and team performance at initial versus advanced stages of team development, and the configurations of tactics associated with better team performance at these developmental stages. While the individual-level literature on influence tactics is based on notions of power and politics, in a team context and specifically with self-managed teams, there is a need to integrate theories of team processes and dynamics to understand how influence tactics are associated with performance.

As organizations increasingly engage with consumers over mobile devices, there is a growing need to understand how consumers react to impression management over platforms with limited textual content. The purpose of this paper is to empirically assess how different impression management tactics can be used in mobile media to enhance consumer perception-attitude-intentions toward a corporate brand.

We surveyed 670 consumers and estimate structural equation models and repeated-measures ANOVAs to determine how short passages employing alternate impression management tactics influence consumers’ perceptions, attitudes and purchase intentions.

Results reveal that each impressions management tactic (i.e. ingratiation, intimidation, organizational promotion, supplication and exemplification) influences consumer perceptions, attitudes and intentions. The authors compare differences in how the impressions management tactics influence each stage of the perception-attitude-intentions model and find evidence that initial differences in perceptions favoring ingratiation and exemplification appeals become magnified for purchase intentions.

Recent calls for research focus on an understanding of how consumers process information on reduced-content platforms of small-screened mobile devices. These results provide empirical evidence of the use of impression management and the difference between five impression management tactics on enhancing consumer perception-attitude-intentions model.

The results of this study will provide marketers with insights to optimize communications and corporate brands with consumers over mobile media.

This paper adds to the nascent yet vital literature on mobile marketing by focusing on how impression management tactics influence perceptions, attitudes and intentions through the short message characteristic of mobile platforms. The authors develop a framework for how corporate brand management can strategically use impressions management tactics in this novel domain.