When Should the Customer Really be King? On the Optimum Level of Salesperson Customer Orientation in Sales Encounters

Ambidextrous product‐selling strategies, in which companies’ salespeople concurrently pursue the sale of existing and new products, are hard to implement. Previous studies have addressed this issue for relatively simple consumer settings with the manager in close proximity to the salespersons and focusing on different levels of control and autonomy to resolve this issue. However, little is known about how field salespeople can be influenced to pursue such dual goals proactively for more complex business‐to‐business products. In this study, the authors distinguish between salespeople's proactive selling behaviour for new and existing products, and study the impact of two alternative mechanisms: a situational mechanism (i.e. perceived manager product‐selling ambidexterity) and a structural mechanism (i.e. salesperson organizational identification). Using a time‐lagged, multisource data set from a large ambidextrous company, the authors demonstrate that both mechanisms contribute to salespeople's proactive selling of new and existing products, but also act as each other's substitutes. The results suggest two most likely strategies for salespeople to obtain overall sales targets: focusing on existing product selling; or acting ambidextrously. The latter approach offers the benefits of better achieving ambidextrous company sales goals and of greater performance stability, and is thus preferred.

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Empirical Studymentioning

confidence: 99%

Alternative Mechanisms Guiding Salespersons’ Ambidextrous Product Selling

Borgh

Jong

Nijssen

2015

“…These benefits might include customers' perceptions of service quality, satisfaction, commitment and loyalty (e.g. Dean, ; Hennig‐Thurau, ; Homburg, Müller and Klarmann, ). A key recommendation for service firms arising from this research is that they should deploy resources to ensure ECO.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Some studies attempt to avoid percept–percept correlations by using dyadic data (e.g. Homburg, Müller and Klarmann, ; Homburg, Wieseke and Hoyer, ), but they do not specifically investigate the relationship between employees' customer orientation (ECO) and customer orientation as perceived by customers (COPC), so they cannot reveal how these constructs differ, theoretically or empirically. Also missing from the extant literature are studies that examine the nature of the relationship between ECO and COPC.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Dyadic Model of Customer Orientation: Mediation and Moderation Effects

Brach

Walsh

Hennig‐Thurau

et al. 2013

This research distinguishes between employees' customer orientation (ECO) and customer orientation as perceived by customers (COPC) to investigate the contingencies of the relationship between these two constructs. Drawing on emotional contagion theory and using a dyadic field study design, the authors examine whether ECO affects COPC, as well as whether the link between ECO and COPC might be mediated by employees' authentic emotional displays. They also examine service scripts and the accuracy with which customers detect employees' authentic emotional displays as moderators of this mediated link. The findings confirm the important role of ECO as an influence on COPC and provide evidence that employees' authentic emotional displays mediate the effects of ECO. In addition, service scripts and customers' detection accuracy have moderating effects.

“…(). We applied a subjective scale to compare the performance of employees from different firms (Homburg, Müller and Klarmann, ) and a self‐report measure because many participating firms would not allow managers to share employees’ individual performance information. We adjusted the performance measure to capture employees’ performance relative to colleagues from the same firm (i.e.…”

Section: Studymentioning

confidence: 99%

The Interplay Between Employee and Firm Customer Orientation: Substitution Effect and the Contingency Role of Performance‐Related Rewards

Herhausen

Luca

Weibel

2017

This paper identifies and explains a potential tension between a firm's emphasis on customer orientation (CO) and the extent to which employees value CO as a success factor for individual performance. Based on self‐determination theory and CO implementation research, the authors propose that firm CO may represent both autonomous and controlled motivations for CO, but that employees’ CO is more strongly linked to individual performance when employees experience solely autonomous motivation. Hence, the authors expect a substitution effect whereby the link between employees’ CO and their performance is weaker when firm CO is high. Furthermore, the authors examine a boundary condition for the previous hypothesis and propose that performance‐contingent rewards have a positive effect on the internalization of the extrinsic motivation stemming from firm CO. Two multilevel studies with 979 employees and 201 top management team members from 132 firms support these hypotheses. Against previous research, these findings offer a new perspective on the effectiveness of CO initiatives, propose employees’ motivational states as the theoretical explanation for the heterogeneity in the link between employee CO and performance, and reappraise the role of performance‐contingent rewards in CO research. Managerial implications for the effective implementation of customer‐oriented initiatives within firms are provided.