Customer-oriented selling: An empirical examination of organizational and individual antecedents, and performance outcomes

The present study examines organizational and individual antecedents, and performance-related consequences, of customer-oriented selling, the most widely accepted form of relational selling in sales research. In an attempt to uncover attitudes and behaviors that lead frontline salespeople to become more customer-oriented, specific variables were analyzed in terms of their influence on customer-oriented selling behaviors. These influences include the leadership style utilized by sales managers, the predominant control system present in the organization, the perceived empowerment of sales managers and salespeople, and the psychological climate of the organization as perceived by both the sales manager and the salesperson. Additionally, in order to improve the current knowledge pertaining to the actual impacts of such salesperson behavior, two separate performance outcome measures were taken to assess the expected positive influence of salespeople being more customer-oriented.; A sample of 106 matched sales manager-sales representative dyads representing five separate organizations was collected to test the proposed relationships. Structural equation modeling was utilized to examine the expected relationships between the aforementioned variables. Results suggest that sales manager leadership style, salesperson perceived empowerment, and certain dimensions of psychological climate all significantly influence the salesperson's utilization of customer-oriented selling. Also, both perceived empowerment and customer-oriented selling were shown to influence salesperson performance.