Exploring the role of salesperson attributes and service behaviors in adaptive selling

Abstract

Services organizations face ever-increasing customer demands and competition in the marketplace, especially in the face-to-face adaptive sales encounters at retail level, making it extremely important to recruit the right kind of salespeople and give them the right kind of training to serve their customers better. However, there is little prior research that combines these two perspectives in the adaptive selling context. We address this gap with a comprehensive model including four salesperson characteristics (attractiveness, communication ability, expertise and trustworthiness) as antecedents, three service performance behaviors (service manner, extra role and need identification) as mediators, and three important outcome behaviors (willingness to disclose, customer satisfaction and behavioral intentions) as consequences. We also test this model using a field-survey with actual customers in a retail setting in Hong Kong. Our findings help demystify the adaptive selling by unraveling the customer evaluation and judgment processes.