Salesperson Adaptive Selling Behavior and Customer Orientation: A Meta-Analys
Published 11/1/2006
Author: George R. Franke and Jeong-Eun Park
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Executive Summary
Understanding the characteristics of effective salespeople has been a long-standing goal of managers and researchers. This study presents a meta-analysis of research on two salesperson characteristics that have been the focus of prominent research streams since the 1980s. One stream examines adaptive selling behavior (ASB), the purposeful altering of sales behaviors within or across customer interactions on the basis of perceptions of the customer or the nature of the selling situation. The other stream involves customer-oriented selling, which emphasizes long-term customer satisfaction rather than short-term sales objectives. The study investigates gender and selling experience as predictors of adaptive and customer-oriented selling job satisfaction and three measures of performance—self-rated, manager-rated, and objective performance—as outcomes.
The results are based on previous findings from 155 samples of more than 31,000 salespeople. Correlations between variables, including the alternative performance measures, are small to moderate. Controlling for salesperson gender and selling experience, structural equation modeling indicates that ASB increases all three measures of performance. Customer orientation (CO) increases only self-rated performance. Both ASB and CO increase job satisfaction. Tests of reciprocal relationships indicate that ASB increases CO and that job satisfaction increases performance rather than vice versa. Selling experience increases performance but not job satisfaction, and saleswomen rate their performance and satisfaction slightly higher than salesmen. Overall, the results indicate that ASB and selling experience have greater effects than CO and gender on salesperson performance.
Recruiting adaptive salespeople and training salespeople to practice ASB appear to be effective ways to increase sales force productivity. However, self-ratings of CO are not significant predictors of manager-rated or objective sales performance. Customer-oriented salespeople must ensure that their focus on satisfying customers’ needs pays off in the long run for their own organization and for their customers.
Biography
George R. Franke is Professor and Reese Phifer Fellow of Marketing in the Culverhouse College of Commerce at the University of Alabama. His previous meta-analytic research has been recognized with best-paper awards from Journal of Advertising and Journal of Public Policy & Marketing, and he has been a finalist for two other Journal of Public Policy & Marketing best-paper awards. He has also published meta-analyses in Journal of Applied Psychology and in AMA and SMA conference proceedings.
Jeong-Eun Park is an Assistant Professor in the Whittemore School of Business and Economics at the University of New Hampshire. He received his doctoral degree in Marketing from the University of Alabama and his MS in Marketing and bachelor’s degree in English Literature from Korea University. His research areas include marketing strategy, sales management, and international studies. He has published his research in journals, such as Journal of Business Research, Journal of Business and Industrial Marketing, and Journal of Personal Selling and Sales Management.
J Marketing Research, Volume 43, Number 4, November 2006
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