The purpose of this research was to test and extend a multidimensional ethics scale developed by Reidenbach and Robin to selected marketing groups. Different marketing practices and groups were used in order to give these measures a wide variety of exposures. These measures performed well in all settings and for all practices. Factor structures in fifteen different trials identified the same three dimensions with one exception. In that exception, two dimensions merged together in five of those fifteen trials. While these dimensions captured much of the variance in the global concept of "ethical~unethical," they did a better job of predicting the respondents' intention to behave than the global measure. These measures also provide the researcher with a partial explanation of why the respondents answered in the manner that they did. The shifting relative importance of the three dimensions in accounting for the variance in the behavioral intention measure provides this explanation. This article reports on four independent studies of various types of marketing activities using the ethics scales developed by Reidenbach and Robin (1988; 1990). The purpose
Empathy is often described as a trait possessed by successful salespeople. Empirical studies that have uncovered a positive relationship between empathy and sales have failed, however, to use empathy measurement techniques deemed appropriate in counseling‐ psychotherapy, the field where most research pertaining to the empathic construct has been conducted. The research reported in this article examines the relationship between a salesperson's empathy and sales performance by using one of the most clinically acceptable empathy measurement instruments: The Barrett‐Lennard Relationship Inventory. The empathy levels of salespersons were determined by new‐car customers. Sales representatives' empathy ratings were then compared with their sales performance. The results of the research contradict the a priori assumption that empathy is positively related to sales performance.
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