انگیزش فروشنده مشتری مدار: بینشی بر مدل ویژگی های شغلی

Relative to sales orientation, customer orientation requires greater expenditure of effort by the salesperson in customer-related interactions. Consequently, salespeople have to be motivated to engage in this mode of selling. In this research, we draw from the job characteristics model (JCM) to argue that (i) salesperson motivation to engage in customer orientation will be impacted by the extent to which they experience their work as meaningful and that (ii) this impact will be moderated by their affective evaluations of two aspects of their work context: their identification with the values of their organization and their satisfaction with the pay they receive. Research results from a survey of 281 salespeople show that experienced meaningfulness has a positive main effect on customer orientation and that both organizational identification and pay satisfaction enhance this positive main effect. Theoretical, managerial, and future research implications arising from the research results are discussed.

It has been widely noted in prior literature that customer-oriented selling (or customer orientation) creates greater long-term performance benefits for the salesperson relative to sales-oriented selling (or sales orientation) Brady and Cronin, 2001, Goff et al., 1997, Kelley, 1992, Langerak, 2001, Reicheld and Sasser, 1990 and Saxe and Weitz, 1982. Despite these benefits, there exists considerable variance in the extent to which customer orientation is practiced Boles et al., 2001 and Brown et al., 2002. A key reason for salesperson persistence with sales orientation and reluctance to engage in customer orientation is that the latter requires greater salesperson effort in customer relationship development activities (Saxe and Weitz, 1982, p. 348). Since effort is determined by motivation (Deci and Ryan, 1985), salesperson motivation to engage in customer orientation is a precondition for its practice. Accordingly, in order to explain the variance in the practice of customer orientation, it is necessary to identify the determinants of salesperson motivation to engage in this mode of selling. While there exists a significant body of the prior literature on customer orientation, there remain important gaps in our understanding of the factors that motivate customer orientation. First, despite considerable evidence regarding the motivating propensity of jobs Eby et al., 1999 and Hackman and Oldham, 1980, the effect of the salesperson's affective evaluation of their job on customer orientation has not been examined in prior literature (for an exception, see O'Hara et al., 1991). Given that jobs exist within organizational contexts, the salesperson's affective evaluation of their job and of their organization have interrelated effects on salesperson motivation to engage in customer orientation. The second limitation in extant customer orientation research is that the interrelated effects of these two different motivational drivers on customer orientation have not been explored. Salespeople receive compensation in exchange for the exertion of effort in their jobs. Thus, it is important to understand the interrelated effects of the salesperson's affective evaluations of their job and of the pay that they receive on their motivation to engage in customer orientation. The third limitation of extant customer orientation literature is that the interrelated effects of these different motivational drivers on customer orientation have not been explored. In this research, we draw from the job characteristics model (JCM) (Hackman and Oldham, 1980) to address these limitations in prior customer orientation research. JCM is especially appropriate for the purposes of our research for two reasons: one, because it explicitly focuses on the motivating potential of jobs, and two, because it explicitly identifies the affective evaluations of the organization context and pay as moderators of the relationship between the salesperson's affective evaluation of their job and motivation, thereby establishing the structure of the interrelationships among these motivational drivers. We begin by developing the theoretical background for our conceptual framework. Following this, we define customer orientation and develop the antecedent and moderators of this construct. Subsequently, we discuss the methods used to test this conceptual framework. The results of our empirical tests are then presented. We close with a discussion of research results in terms of their implications for future research, theory, and practice.