Salesperson effectiveness and relational communication: An observational field study of salesperson/customer conversational interaction.
Item
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Title
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Salesperson effectiveness and relational communication: An observational field study of salesperson/customer conversational interaction.
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Identifier
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AAI9009772
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identifier
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9009772
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Creator
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Rifon, Nora Joan.
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Contributor
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Adviser: Gary Soldow
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Date
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1989
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Language
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English
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Publisher
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City University of New York.
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Subject
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Business Administration, Marketing | Speech Communication
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Abstract
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Recent literature on the salesperson/customer interaction has broadened the conceptual domain of the sales situation by acknowledging relational exchange between the salesperson and the customer. Relational exchange in its broadest sense is the process of social exchange by which the buyer and seller develop a relationship.;The development of the relationship between a salesperson and his/her customer was examined in this study of relational exchange during the sales interaction. Both the salesperson and the customer were observed and the interaction of their verbal conversational behaviors was used as a unit of analysis for the study of relationship as it emerged during the course of conversation.;The dimension of relationship measured was the relative dominance between the salesperson and the customer. A relational communication conversational coding scheme was used to code each utterance of each conversation for the nature of its conversational control attempt. The application of the Markov process provided a stochastic model of each salesperson's conversational control attempt choices in response to customer control requests during the course of conversation.;The data suggested that the salespeople actively chose to respond to their customers in a manner which created a level of relative dominance between the members of each sales dyad. Indeed, salesperson effectiveness, measured as customer satisfaction, was significantly related to a salesperson's appropriate, complementary responding to a customer's relational requests to take control or to relinquish control.;As expected, no statements could be made regarding the relative effectiveness of a salesperson's dominance or deference in response to his/her customer. However, the data support that the salespeople actively responded to their customers to affect the relational tone of their sales conversations, and that the satisfaction of customer relational requests was related to overall customer satisfaction.
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Type
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dissertation
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Source
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PQT Legacy CUNY.xlsx
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degree
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Ph.D.
