The Persuasion Effectiveness In The Sales Interactions

Under the current business background that the buyers'market play a dominant role, the firms'marketing claims must conduct in the consumers'view, which aimed at persuading consumers forming favorable attitude to products and then achieving the sales. However, the intricate circumstance has induced consumers'twofold reactions to the firm's claims. On the one hand, the rapid development of technology and the fast upgrade of products have set up higher threshold for consumers to comprehend the products'quality and features than before, then, the consumers need certain business claims to increase their understanding of products. On the other hand, however, through long time contact, consumers have known a lot about the firms'persuasion tactics, so they wouldn't be influenced easily. Add some firms' fraud and trick, consumers'skepticism is intensified and they would question the product claims. The two states of affair are intertwined, making consumers' contradictory psychological state of both love and hate to product claims, obviously, neglecting either reaction of consumers would not achieve valid marketing communication. Therefore, thoroughly understanding the consumers'reactions to product claims has become the key practical issue for firms'marketing communication.Sales interaction is one of the most important patterns of firms'marketing communication, and is a typical business persuasion situation, too, so it has got much scholars'attentions. A general survey of sales interaction related researches has shown that, the researchers now have given up the perspective of explaining interaction outcomes by salesman's characteristics, and they have gradually emphasized the consumers'role. Furthermore, exploring the formation of interaction outcomes from the view of information process and cognitive reaction has become the new research focus. So we can see that both the practical background and theory research have focus on the key problem of consumers'action to marketing claims. Some scholars advocated using "persuasion coping" to express this reaction, which highlights consumers'intuitive and goal orientation. However, literature review has shown hardly any research has exploring the interaction outcomes from the persuasion coping perspective. In addition, present research on persuasion coping lay particular emphasis on consumers'defences, and not integrating the view of consumers'information search, so the interrelated conclusions may be biased.Therefore, this dissertation mainly focuses on the following issue:how the consumers cope with the salespersons'persuasion to influence the interaction outcomes? Referring to relative research results of attitude formation, the dissertation established the framework of "salesperson's characteristics (external stimulus)-consumer persuasion coping (information processing)-the persuasion effective (attitude formation)", and explored the following three closely related sub-questions step by step:First, how to explain consumer persuasion coping is accurate and complete? Two, what role does consumer persuasion coping play in the forming process of persuasion effective? Three, how does the interaction of consumer knowledge and salesperson's characteristics impact persuasion coping?Accordingly, three sub-researches were conducted to answer these above-mentioned questions gradually. For the first sub-question, the paper referenced a lot of research results from different views, combined to the results of in-depth interview and factor analysis, and then fixed the dimensions of persuasion coping. For the second sub-question, this paper proposed the mechanism model of salesperson's characteristics (expertise, effort, likability) on the persuasion effectiveness through persuasion coping and research hypotheses. Then 687 valid questionnaires were collected, and factor analysis and structural equation modeling is applied to testify the concept model. For the third sub-question, the paper introduced product knowledge and persuasion knowledge, explored their direct influences on consumer persuasion coping, and their moderate effect on the relation of salesperson's characteristics and persuasion coping.Through the above research, some conclusions are summed up as follow:(1) Consumer persuasion coping includes two coexisted dimensions of seeker coping and defender coping.Depending on theory integration and the results of interview and factor analysis, the conclusions definitely show that consumer persuasion coping in the sales interactions includes both seeker coping and defender coping. Former researches have shown that seeker coping is based on the consumers'trust and dependence on the salespersons, while defender coping is based on consumers'suspicion and resistance to the salespersons, so relative researches usually discussed them desperately. In fact, the two reactions are coexisted. The seeker coping is consumer's reaction to the product information and the defender coping is consumer's reaction to the salesperson's motivations, expressing cognitive component and social component respectively. Furthermore, the results of interview and factor analysis also shown the same thing, that is seeker coping and defender coping emphasizing on different aspects, so they can't be replaced by the other one.This conclusion resolves the conflict of different perspectives on consumer reaction to marketing persuasion, providing theoretical and statistical evidences to the coexistence of seeker coping and defender coping, then widen the research perspective of consumer persuasion coping.(2) In the sales interactions, salesperson's characteristics (expertise, effort, likability) impact the persuasion effectiveness through the mediator of consumer persuasion coping.The statistical results show that salesperson's characteristics indirectly impact persuasion effectiveness through consumer persuasion coping. In detail, expertise, effort and likability all can influence persuasion effectiveness through seeker coping, and the power of expertise is strongest. Expertise and likability can influence persuasion effectiveness through defender coping, and the power of likability is stronger. However, effort can't influence defender coping significantly.This conclusion explores the process path of the formation of sales interactions from the view of consumer persuasion coping, which combines the external stimulus and the internal information processing, so a new explanatory perspective is offered to the formation mechanism of persuasion effectiveness.(3) Consumer's product knowledge and persuasion knowledge not only drive the persuasion coping, but also moderate the impact of salesperson's characteristics on persuasion coping.The multiple regression analysis of the samples shows that the product knowledge negatively influence seeker coping, and it also moderate the relation between salesperson's characteristics and persuasion coping, that is, the more the product knowledge consumers have, the little of the impact of expertise and likability on seeker coping. Additionally, the persuasion knowledge has negative effect on defender coping, and it could also moderate the relation between likability and defender coping.This conclusion examines the influence of consumer knowledge on persuasion coping, deepening the understanding of interaction mechanism between salesperson and consumer, and providing some reference value for marketer to select customer-oriented communication tactics and coordinate the communication relation.