The effects of empathy on salesperson effectiveness

Dawson, Lyndon E.; Soper, Barlow; Pettijohn, Charles E.

doi:10.1002/mar.4220090404

Cited by 68 publications

(42 citation statements)

References 17 publications

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“…However, most empirical research in marketing directly links employees' empathy to performance outcomes, leading to mixed results (Dawson, Soper, and Pettijohn 1992;Pilling and Eroglu 1994). In our research, we link empathy to CNK, a construct that is conceptually closer than performance outcomes.…”

Section: Research Issuesmentioning

confidence: 97%

Implementing the Marketing Concept at the Employee–Customer Interface: The Role of Customer Need Knowledge

Homburg

Wieseke

Bornemann

2009

Journal of Marketing

220

185

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Although the identification of customer needs constitutes a cornerstone of the marketing concept, the accuracy of frontline employees' perceptions of customer needs has never been examined in a systematic manner. Following research in social cognition, this article introduces the concept of "customer need knowledge" (CNK), which describes the extent to which a frontline employee can accurately identify a given customer's hierarchy of needs. The results of two large-scale, multilevel investigations involving data from three different levels (customers, employees, and managers) demonstrate the importance of CNK for the provision of customer satisfaction and customer value. In particular, CNK fully mediates the influence of employees' customer orientation and cognitive empathy on these customer outcomes. Moreover, whereas the length of the relationship between an employee and a particular customer enhances CNK, a large age discrepancy in relation to the customer decreases employees' level of CNK.

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Section: Research Issuesmentioning

confidence: 97%

Implementing the Marketing Concept at the Employee–Customer Interface: The Role of Customer Need Knowledge

Homburg

Wieseke

Bornemann

2009

Journal of Marketing

220

185

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Recent work on the use of affect in personal selling has generally focused on moods and emotions present in the sales encounter, including sales call anxiety (Verbeke and Bagozzi 2000), shame and embarrassment (Verbeke and Bagozzi 2002), trust (Doney and Cannon 1997), effective listening skills (Comer and Drollinger 1999), empathy (e.g., Dawson, Soper, and Pettijohn 1992), optimism (Schulman 1999), and positive mood states (George 1998). Despite these contributions, little is known about how salespeople are able to perceive the emotions of customers in buyer-seller interactions.…”

Section: Affect In Personal Sellingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Perceiving Emotion in the Buyer–Seller Interchange: The Moderated Impact on Performance

Kidwell

McFarland

Avila

2007

Journal of Personal Selling & Sales Management

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This research focuses on the salesperson's ability to perceive emotions in the buyer-seller interaction. Drawing on the emotional ability literature, the authors develop hypotheses within a conceptual framework of salespeople's ability to perceive the emotions of customers, and examine how this ability influences the relationships between selling behaviors and performance. Findings indicated that the ability to accurately appraise the emotions of others moderated the practice of adaptive selling and customer-oriented selling on performance. Further analyses revealed that while high perceiving ability has beneficial effects on selling, low perceiving ability not only limits the use of customer-oriented selling but also has a negative impact on sales performance. Both self-reported and supervisor-reported measures of selling performance were used, along with a performance-based measure of emotional perceiving ability. Implications are discussed along with directions for future research.

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“…While sales personnels' empathetic abilities have been identified by a number of theorists as a pre-requisite to successful selling (Greenberg and Greenberg 1983;Sager and Ferris 1986), the limited empirical evidence has produced somewhat contradictory evidence of the link between sales performance and empathy (Spiro and Weitz 1990;Dawson and Pettijohn 1992). Even where service delivery has failed, the ability of the service provider to empathize with the customer can help build a relationship (Bitner 1990).…”

Section: Adrian Palmer and David Bejou Sellers' Customer Orientation/mentioning

confidence: 99%

Buyer‐seller relationships: A conceptual model and empirical investigation

Palmer

Bejou

1994

Journal of Marketing Management

139

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Increasing emphasis is being placed by marketing managers on the need to build long-term relationships between themselves and their customers. Analysis of long-term buyer-seller relationships has drawn heavily on the literature of social psychology, especially in making comparisons with family relationships. It has been proposed that buyer-seller relationships go through some form of lifecycle, paralleling cyclical relationships in other areas of human activity. However, models of the evolutionary development of buyer-seller relationships have remained largely theoretical, with little empirical validation of the life cycle concept, or analysis of the changing composition of a relationship as it progresses through a life cycle. This paper provides cross-sectional empirical evidence of the existence of a buyer-seller relationship life cycle within the investment services sector. The elements that buyers perceive as being important in holding a relationship together are dependent on the duration to date of the relationship. In the early stages of development, selling pressure is perceived as being a dominant element in relationship development, giving way to judgements of ethical credibility and empathy as the relationship develops. From this initial survey of investment services customers, a number of implications for relationship marketing strategies within the services sector are suggested.

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The effects of empathy on salesperson effectiveness

Cited by 68 publications

References 17 publications

Implementing the Marketing Concept at the Employee–Customer Interface: The Role of Customer Need Knowledge

Implementing the Marketing Concept at the Employee–Customer Interface: The Role of Customer Need Knowledge

Perceiving Emotion in the Buyer–Seller Interchange: The Moderated Impact on Performance

Buyer‐seller relationships: A conceptual model and empirical investigation

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