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Book part
Publication date: 4 September 2003

Michael W Preis, Salvatore F Divita and Amy K Smith

Missing in most of the research on selling has been an examination of the process from the point of view of the customer. When satisfaction in selling has been considered…

Abstract

Missing in most of the research on selling has been an examination of the process from the point of view of the customer. When satisfaction in selling has been considered, researchers have focused on the satisfaction of the salesperson with his job and/or the impact of this job satisfaction on performance (e.g. Bluen, Barling & Burns, 1990; Churchill, Ford & Walker, 1979; Pruden & Peterson, 1971). To concentrate on salesperson performance while neglecting customers is to ignore the most important half of the relationship between buyers and sellers and entirely disregards the marketing concept and the streams of research in customer satisfaction. This research takes a different approach and examines customers’ satisfaction with salespeople.

Details

Evaluating Marketing Actions and Outcomes
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-0-76231-046-3

Article
Publication date: 17 November 2023

Halimin Herjanto, Muslim Amin and Cut Erika Fatimah

This study investigates the role of knowledge collecting and donating in enhancing relationship proneness and intimacy and improving a bank's salesperson satisfaction and…

Abstract

Purpose

This study investigates the role of knowledge collecting and donating in enhancing relationship proneness and intimacy and improving a bank's salesperson satisfaction and performance.

Design/methodology/approach

Using the snowball technique, 315 online questionnaires were collected from commercial banks. A total of 300 useable questionnaires were included for further analysis.

Findings

The findings demonstrated that knowledge collecting affects relationship proneness and salesperson performance, while knowledge donating affects relationship proneness but not satisfaction. The results also suggested that relationship proneness is responsible for salesperson intimacy. Furthermore, intimacy was found to affect salesperson performance and satisfaction. Finally, salesperson satisfaction was found to affect salesperson performance positively.

Practical implications

The findings help bankers understand and utilize the power of their knowledge management in improving their sales performance and developing suitable training and strategies to strengthen salesperson intimacy.

Originality/value

This study incorporated knowledge management, relationship proneness and intimacy to enhance a better understanding of how these indicators will affect the salesperson's satisfaction and performance.

Details

Business Process Management Journal, vol. 30 no. 1
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1463-7154

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 29 September 2023

Tyler Hancock, Michael L. Mallin, Ellen B. Pullins and Catherine M. Johnson

This study aims to use cognitive appraisal theory to explain how organizational disruption influences the development of envy resulting in unethical selling practices, turnover…

Abstract

Purpose

This study aims to use cognitive appraisal theory to explain how organizational disruption influences the development of envy resulting in unethical selling practices, turnover intentions and a reduction in customer orientation that causes disruption to impact customer relationships. This research helps to address drivers of salesperson envy, the potential disruptions to customer relationships and the required need to invest in psychological resources to offset these negative effects.

Design/methodology/approach

A total of 211 salespeople were surveyed to test the hypotheses. First, the measurement model was validated using a confirmatory factor analysis. Next, the hypotheses were tested using structural equation modeling AMOS 27. Mediation and moderated mediation were tested using the bootstrap method. Estimands were created within AMOS to test the indirect and interaction effects in the full model. A post hoc analysis further informed the findings.

Findings

The results show that the development of envy increases under conditions of organizational disruptions, leading to potential customer disruptions through turnover intentions, unethical selling behaviors and a reduction in customer orientation. In addition, the mediation analysis shows that envy drives the relationship between organizational disruption and unethical selling, turnover intentions and customer orientation through fully mediated relationships. Finally, the interaction effects between organizational disruption and psychological capital show high levels of psychological capital help to decrease the development of envy, thus reducing unethical selling behaviors and turnover intentions while increasing customer orientation.

Practical implications

The study provides practitioners with insights into how to reduce envy by investing in the psychological capital of their salesforce. The study also provides suggestions for handling disruptions and managing envy to prevent actions that act to damage customer relationships.

Originality/value

Salespeople are likely to encounter organizational disruption. Sales managers need to be prepared to manage the outcomes of organizational disruption as it impacts the sales force. Understanding how disruptions impact customer relationships through envy is an important yet under-explored topic. This research adds to and expands the sales literature using cognitive appraisal theory to help address drivers of salesperson envy and its potentially negative impact on customer relationships and shows the required need to invest in psychological resources to offset these negative effects. The study also helps expand the recent focus on worldwide disruptions by adopting another context for disruption stemming from organizational disruption.

Details

Journal of Business & Industrial Marketing, vol. ahead-of-print no. ahead-of-print
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0885-8624

Keywords

Open Access
Article
Publication date: 18 August 2022

Jonna Pauliina Koponen and Saara Maria Julkunen

This paper aims to explore how and why salespeople enhance or hinder long-term business-to-business (B2B) customer relationships at the interpersonal level by considering…

3605

Abstract

Purpose

This paper aims to explore how and why salespeople enhance or hinder long-term business-to-business (B2B) customer relationships at the interpersonal level by considering self-disclosure and relational cost and reward evaluations.

Design/methodology/approach

Data from interviews (N = 47) with B2B sales professionals were analyzed, focusing on the shift of the phases in long-term B2B customer relationships.

Findings

Long-term B2B customer relationships evolve at the interpersonal level through a process of continuous relational cost and reward evaluation, self-disclosure and business disclosure in three phases: becoming business partners, collaborative partners and collaborative and personal partners. The reward evaluations progress from being business related to including even more relational benefits. Disclosure progresses through general business disclosure and general self-disclosure; strategic business disclosure and personal life self-disclosure; and synergistic business disclosure and private self-disclosure.

Research limitations/implications

The long-term B2B customer relationships could be studied at the interpersonal level from the customer’s perspective. Self-disclosure could be studied in cross-cultural settings as well as gender differences should be considered in future studies. Business and social penetration theory could be applied to investigate different types of relationships and other professional relationships, such as those between employers and employees. It would be important to test whether the business-related and self-disclosure subtypes apply to the development of other types of professional relationships or whether other disclosure subtypes exist. The authors recommend exploring salespeople’s and customers’ privacy management strategies in multiple communication channels.

Practical implications

Managers may apply the results of this study in their customer relationship management and sales training.

Originality/value

The findings outline a contextual extension of social penetration theory.

Details

European Journal of Marketing, vol. 56 no. 13
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0309-0566

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 8 January 2019

Magnus Hultman, Abena Animwaa Yeboah-Banin and Nathaniel Boso

Contemporary sales scholarship suggests that salespersons pursuing customer satisfaction should improvise (think and act on their feet) to find solutions to customers’ emergent…

Abstract

Purpose

Contemporary sales scholarship suggests that salespersons pursuing customer satisfaction should improvise (think and act on their feet) to find solutions to customers’ emergent problems. A missing link in this literature, however, is the relational context within which improvisation takes place and becomes effective. This study aims to examine how the tone of the salespersoncustomer relationship (whether cordial or coercive) drives and conditions salesperson improvisation and its implications for customer satisfaction.

Design/methodology/approach

The study tests the proposed model using dyadic salespersoncustomer data from business-to-business (B2B) markets in Ghana. The relationships are tested using structural equation modeling technique.

Findings

The study finds that salesperson improvisation is associated with customer satisfaction. It also finds the extent of cordiality between salespersons and their customers predicts but does not enhance the value of improvisation for customer satisfaction. The reverse is true for customer exercised coercive power which is not a significant driver of improvisation but can substantially alter its benefits for the worse.

Practical implications

By implication, salespersons should improvise more to be able to satisfy customers. However, such improvisation must be tempered with a consciousness of the relationship shared with customers and the level of power they exercise in the relationship.

Originality/value

Because improvised behavior deviates from routines and may be unsettling for customers, improvising salespersons must first understand whether their customers would be willing to accommodate such deviations. Yet, the literature is silent on this relational context surrounding improvisation. This study, by exploring facilitating and inhibitory relational variables implicated in improvisation, addresses this gap.

Details

Journal of Business & Industrial Marketing, vol. 34 no. 6
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0885-8624

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 27 January 2020

Deva Rangarajan, Michael Peasley, Bert Paesbrugghe, Rajesh V. Srivastava and Geoffrey T. Stewart

This study aims to examine the impact of stress as a result of adverse life events on a salesperson’s ability to effectively manage customer relationships. The framework…

Abstract

Purpose

This study aims to examine the impact of stress as a result of adverse life events on a salesperson’s ability to effectively manage customer relationships. The framework identifies burnout as a key mediating variable and salesperson grit as a coping mechanism.

Design/methodology/approach

Survey data is gathered from 364 B2B salespeople and investigated using structural equation modeling in Mplus 8.2.

Findings

The findings reveal adverse life events and their corresponding stress diminish a salesperson’s ability to manage customer relationships effectively through the mediators of reduced personal accomplishment and depersonalization. Thus, negative events of a personal nature can have a significant impact on salesperson outcomes and should be taken with the same level of seriousness as job-related stress. Furthermore, results show that salesperson grit provides mixed results as a coping mechanism.

Practical implications

The findings indicate that practitioners should be mindful of the negative impact adverse life events can have on work-related outcomes. Organizations and sales managers must be intentional in managing relationships with their salespeople and strategic in the structure they use to manage customer relationships. Recommendations include the use of regular one-on-one meetings to open up a dialogue about work or personal issues the salesperson is experiencing and assigning multiple resources or staff to service valuable customers, thereby not relying on solitary salespeople.

Originality/value

Employee well-being contributes to firm value; yet, this is the first study in sales to explore the impact of adverse life events on salesperson outcomes.

Details

Journal of Business & Industrial Marketing, vol. 36 no. 12
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0885-8624

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 1 April 2000

James Boles, Thomas Brashear, Danny Bellenger and Hiram Barksdale

Examines the effect of relationship selling activities on salesperson performance. It further explores the link between demographic selection criteria and the propensity of a…

5331

Abstract

Examines the effect of relationship selling activities on salesperson performance. It further explores the link between demographic selection criteria and the propensity of a salesperson to perform relationship selling behaviors. Relationship selling behaviors as examined in this study include interaction intensity, mutual disclosure, and cooperative intentions. The study was based on a sample of 487 business‐to‐business insurance salespeople. Findings indicate that interaction intensity and mutual disclosure have a significant effect on salesperson performance. Cooperative intentions do not influence performance. Results further demonstrate that some demographic criteria appear to be related to a salesperson’s likelihood of engaging in relationship selling.

Details

Journal of Business & Industrial Marketing, vol. 15 no. 2/3
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0885-8624

Keywords

Open Access
Article
Publication date: 31 August 2021

Jonna Koponen, Saara Julkunen, Mika Gabrielsson and Ellen Bolman Pullins

The purpose of this paper is to explore how business-to-business (B2B), intercultural, interpersonal salespersoncustomer relationships develop using the lens of identity…

4396

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to explore how business-to-business (B2B), intercultural, interpersonal salespersoncustomer relationships develop using the lens of identity management theory (IMT; Imahori and Cupach, 2005).

Design/methodology/approach

The research uses qualitative semi-structured interviews on 18 targeted relationships with customers from another culture conducted with business-to-business salespeople.

Findings

The findings indicate that our respondents' relationships moved from trial toward enmeshment and on occasion toward the renegotiation phase, as described in IMT. In the case of low cultural diversity between salesperson and customer, the relationships reached the trial and enmeshment phase. In the case of high cultural diversity between salesperson and customer, the relationships on occasion evolved toward the renegotiation phase. Salespeople's cultural intelligence (CQ) facilitates the development of interpersonal, intercultural salespersoncustomer relationships.

Originality/value

The authors transfer IMT from the personal relationship development arena to B2B intercultural, interpersonal relationships, address a gap in the literature in the understanding of salespersoncustomer interpersonal relationships in different contexts and develop a theoretical model to understand intercultural, interpersonal salespersoncustomer relationship development across different levels of cultural diversity.

Details

International Marketing Review, vol. 38 no. 6
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0265-1335

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 7 September 2015

Omar S. Itani and Aniefre Eddie Inyang

The purpose of this paper is to examine the relations between salespeople’s empathy and listening behaviour and the relationship quality (RQ) customers have with their banks…

3218

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to examine the relations between salespeople’s empathy and listening behaviour and the relationship quality (RQ) customers have with their banks, taking into consideration the moderating effect of felt stress (FS) experienced by salespeople. The paper examines specific effects of FS on factors related to a salesperson’s performance.

Design/methodology/approach

To examine the proposed model, responses from 150 customers were collected and matched with responses from 25 salespeople working at a major ba ' nk in Chile. The paper analysed the dyadic data gathered using two analysis techniques. Structural equation modelling was employed to test the relationships proposed at the customer level. Moreover, hierarchical linear modelling was used to test the moderating effect of FS, measured at the salesperson level, on the proposed relationships.

Findings

The results show that customers’ perceptions of salespeople’s listening behaviour mediate the relationship between customers’ perception of salespeople’s empathy and RQ with the bank. Moreover, the positive relationship between salespeople’s empathy and salespeople’s listening behaviour, and the positive relationship between salesperson’s listening and customer’s RQ with bank are attenuated by the salesperson’s FS.

Originality/value

This paper examined the effects of the salesperson’s empathy and listening behaviour on the quality of customer relationships with the bank. Moreover, dyadic data show that such effects are influenced by variables related to the bank’s salespeople, such as FS. The findings show that under high FS conditions, salespeople with high listening skills will have negative effects on their customers’ RQ with the bank.

Details

International Journal of Bank Marketing, vol. 33 no. 6
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0265-2323

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 11 November 2014

Said Echchakoui

This paper aims to answer a prominent question that arises for the manager who wishes to recruit a salesperson to maintain and develop a portfolio–customer relationship: Under…

1122

Abstract

Purpose

This paper aims to answer a prominent question that arises for the manager who wishes to recruit a salesperson to maintain and develop a portfolio–customer relationship: Under which condition is this decision profitable for the firm? Though several authors have underscored the importance of the salesperson's role in the creation of purchaser–salesperson relationships, in the author's knowledge, no study has focused on the salesperson's profitability in the relationship approach. This issue is significant for sales managers because the investment in sales force is greater, and the relationship profitability with customers is not guaranteed.

Design/methodology/approach

Econometric model based on transaction cost economics theory and dynamic exchange between firm, salesperson and a customer. Specifically, this model links between customer life value, firm financial value, salesperson cost and relationship time.

Findings

Three zones are identified that can characterize the dynamic salesperson profitability. It was shown that only one zone can be profitable to the firm.

Research limitations/implications

This result is important because it can solve the equivocal posit between scholars with regard to the success or the failure of relationship marketing. This study also specifies the critical retention rate, the critical duration time in which a salesperson begins to be profitable.

Originality/value

In the author's knowledge, this study is the first to use an exchange model to show in which conditions the salesperson will be profitable in relationship marketing.

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