Examining the effect of salesperson service behavior in a competitive context

Springer Science and Business Media LLC - Tập 35 - Trang 603-616 - 2007
Michael Ahearne1, Ronald Jelinek2, Eli Jones1
1Department of Marketing and Entrepreneurship, Bauer College of Business, University of Houston, Houston, USA
2Providence College, Providence, USA

Tóm tắt

While few scholars debate the importance of doing things to improve the quality of the buyer–seller relationship, little is known about what salespeople can do after the point of the initial sale to enhance customer satisfaction and trust. On the basis of extensive exploratory interviews across professional selling domains, this research develops a set of behaviors, referred to here as “salesperson service behaviors.” Using data gathered from 358 customers, the authors empirically demonstrate the effect of these behaviors on customer satisfaction and trust and, ultimately, on an objective measure of customer share of market. The authors develop a competitive model that uniquely features customer evaluations of competing sales representatives. The results indicate that these salesperson service behaviors are important in building trust and customer satisfaction, which in turn lead to increases in customer share of market.

Tài liệu tham khảo

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