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In today’s rapidly changing sales environment, successful salespeople must acquire skills that give them a competitive advantage. Emotional intelligence (EI), defined as perceiving, interpreting, and reacting to one’s own and others’ emotions, is offered as one critical skill that will allow salespeople to guide their behavior and think in ways that can enhance their sales performance. In this paper, we review emotional intelligence and discuss how it is related to existing theories of sales performance. Research propositions are then developed based on the Walker, Churchill, and Ford (1977) sales performance model. Strategies for sales practitioners are proposed, and additional opportunities for future research are identified.

Training in emotional intelligence (EI) offers a means for developing the communication and interpersonal skills needed by salespeople to develop and improve relationships with customers. Yet little research has explored EI as a precursor to effective sales performance, and existing quantitative measurement tools have been found to be psychometrically inadequate. To address this issue, an exploratory qualitative study was undertaken. Data collected via one‐on‐one depth interviews provides preliminary evidence of a relationship between sales performance and EI. Implications for sales organizations and researchers are discussed.

To enhance our understanding of the optimal buyer‐seller dyad composition in different cultures, this study investigates differences in male and female buyers’ perceptions of male and female sales representatives in Pakistan. Data collected from 88 Pakistani buyers reveal that although male and female salespeople were perceived somewhat differently depending on the buyer’s gender, many similarities were also found. In addition, buyers did not perceive salespeople of the same gender more positively than salespeople of the opposite gender. Most of the male buyers did not perceive sales to be an appropriate career for Pakistani women. Overall, the results suggest female Pakistani sales representatives are more relationship‐oriented, and some male Pakistani buyers may prefer working with female salespeople.

While sales careers offer tremendous job potential, they are frequently overlooked by graduating college students. Previous research suggests that negative sales stereotypes have influenced students’ desire for sales careers. In this paper we revisit student attitudes toward sales careers to identify student segments most likely to have positive and realistic views of sales careers. We found that marketing majors or students who have taken two or more sales classes view sales careers more positively than other business students. Non‐marketing majors or students exposed to sales careers either through internships/work experience or having family members in sales did not exhibit positive attitudes toward sales. We also observed some interesting gender differences on attitudes toward sales. We suggest that corporate recruiters may want to focus their recruiting efforts on marketing majors or students who have taken sales classes to identify students with positive and realistic views of sales careers: resulting in better employee task fit, lower job turnover, and reduced costs of recruitment.

The purpose of this paper is to examine differences between Hispanic and Asian immigrants and their preferences in the appearance of and interaction with salespeople.

A total of 171 female Hispanic and 153 Asian female retail consumers in a midwestern city, who immigrated to the USA, were surveyed. Salesperson‐customer interaction and preference for salespeople with a similar ethnic appearance were assessed.

Findings from F‐tests indicated that in this study Asians have a significantly greater preference for a salesperson similar in appearance to themselves and Hispanics have significantly greater preference for salespeople who offer attentive service.

Retailers will benefit by understanding and capitalizing on differences which will encourage customer loyalty to their retail stores.

Extending the observable characteristics facet of the buyer‐seller similarity model, the research results suggest that buyers from different ethnic groups will assess salesperson characteristics differently.

The purpose of this study is to examine the degree of ethnic identity and demographic characteristics (the length of residency in the USA, education, income, age, and origin of ethnicity) in relation to brand purchases for status.

The research is based on a survey of 324 retail customers of Hispanics (n=173) and Asians (n=151) with analysis performed using regression analysis, t‐tests, and ANCOVA.

The stronger an immigrant identifies with his/her ethnic culture, the more likely he/she is to purchase high‐priced branded products for status purposes. Immigrants with higher incomes are more likely to purchase high‐ priced prestige brands. Younger immigrants report a greater propensity to purchase high‐priced prestige brands. No relationship with the dependent variable was found with length of time in the USA, education, and origin of ethnicities of immigrants.

The major contribution of this research is to demonstrate the importance of ethnic identity strength, to reveal the major demographic variables on immigrant consumer behaviors, and to identify means by which practitioners can effectively use ethnicity strength, income, and age to target immigrant consumers.

The study examines the extrinsic variables, namely store environment, promotional activities (PA), product features and stimulation factors that encourage compulsive purchasing in emerging markets.

The data were collected from customers with recent compulsive shopping experiences at an online retail store. This study collected 469 original survey responses employing purposive sampling and data analyzed with covariance-based structural equation modeling and used segmentation analysis.

The study results indicated that extrinsic (stimulus) factors, such as shop environment, PA and stimulation factors positively impacted shoppers’ impulsive buying tendency (IBT), whereas product characteristics did not affect shoppers’ IBT. Similarly, IBT (organism) influenced compulsive purchase, as did a favorable mediating relationship between extrinsic factors (stimulus factors) and shoppers’ compulsive purchase (response factor). Moreover, segmentation results showed that female consumers had more IBT and compulsive buying behavior than male respondents.

This research adds to the corpus of information concerning impulsive and compulsive buying behavior. As this study incorporates the Stimulus-Organism-Response paradigm, new findings emerge; using this paradigm allows for the testing of new linkages to better understand consumers’ impulsive and compulsive behavior.

The purpose of this paper is to examine gender, need for affect and tolerance for risk-taking as influences on consumers’ use of information sources.

A survey was conducted using a convenience sample of 171 male and 180 female US college students. Data were analyzed using PASW Statistics 18 and Analysis of Moment Structure (AMOS) 18.

Results showed that consumers may be characterized by their use of information sources. First, consumers who use internal information sources are women. Second, consumers who use personal external information sources are women and individuals who enjoy processing feelings. Third, consumers who use impersonal external information sources are women, feeling processors, and risk-takers. Consumers in the third group may find the market-dominant information more useful than the personal opinions of reference groups, indicating that they may tend to be pro-active in exploring and getting what they want rather than allowing their reference groups to suggest ideas to them.

Results of the current study cannot be generalized to the larger population of other consumer groups. This research affirms and extends the Consumer Decision Process Model (Blackwell et al., 2005) regarding individual difference variables (e.g. gender, need for affect, tolerance for risk-taking) related to consumers’ use of information sources in apparel shopping.

Results of the study suggest that apparel marketers who provide information through impersonal sources pay special attention to women and risk-takers because they are more likely to be the group of consumers on the other side of the communication link. Marketers may want to focus on promotional strategies that stimulate consumers’ emotions and valence toward products, brands, and/or stores thereby responding to customers’ need for affect. It is also recommended that marketers consider which categories of impersonal sources best fit their target customers.

This study is the first to investigate the effects of consumers’ gender, need for affect, and tolerance for risk-taking on their preference of using information sources in clothing shopping.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate whether and under what condition does affective orientation (AO) drive salesperson performance (SP) and whether there is a tradeoff between affective orientation and the need for cognition (NFC). Using career stage theory, this research proposes that emotion is important and that the relationship between AO and SP is conditional and mediated.

The hypothesized model is tested using survey data that were collected from 611 attendees at a Midwest regional sales meeting of a national direct selling organization. The model was estimated using 5,000 bootstrapped samples drawn to assess the conditional and indirect effects.

The findings reveal that AO increases SP when mediated through motivation to work (MW), but only during the salesperson’s initial stage of their career – their first year. In subsequent career stages, AO’s impact on SP diminishes, while NFC’s impact on SP remains significant regardless of career stage.

The data were collected from a single selling organization.

This study increases the understanding of the relationship between salesperson emotion (AO) and SP. This informs sales managers that new salespeople interpret information both emotionally and cognitively, which impacts the management of early career salespeople.

Sales research rarely investigates the role of emotion. This research finds that emotion can be an asset to new salespeople. However, the need for emotion (AO) decreases with experience and no longer has a significant impact on performance after the initial stage.