The Effects of Sales Message and Suspicion of Ulterior Motives on Salesperson Evaluation

Abstract

This research investigates the extent to which a salesperson's presentation and consumer suspicion of ulterior motive affect salesperson evaluations and purchase intentions. Study 1 indicates that a salesperson's presentation plays an essential role in confirming or discontinuing consumer suspicion and that this process has important implications in the formation of salesperson attitudes. Evidence from Study 2 demonstrates that these interaction effects are mediated by persuasion‐motive attributions. The findings also support a direct link between attitude toward the salesperson and purchase intentions. Collectively, these results extend the persuasion literature by demonstrating that suspicion of motive is a dynamic state in which consumers entertain rival hypotheses about the salesperson (e.g., is the salesperson truly motivated to help me, or motivated to make his or her commission?) and that, depending on the degree of suspicion, the same salesperson's tactics will be processed very differently by consumers.

Effects of suspicion on the perception of online referrals: the role of congruity and message sidedness

“…These results extend eWOM-research by demonstrating the effect of referral characteristics on the recipients' attributional thoughts. Furthermore these findings are consistent with previous research (Campbell and Kirmani, 2000;DeCarlo, 2005;Fein et al, 1989) and provide additional support for the notion that information processed subsequent to suspicion arousal can influence motive attributions (as noted earlier, our failure to validate our predictions using the item based on subjects' open responses may have been a result of the implied measurement procedure). Surprisingly subjects' attitudes towards the referral object were not affected by the experimental treatments as expected.…”

“…Statements that reflected thoughts about referral motives were coded as "attributional thoughts". Within this category all statements that reflected thoughts about ulterior motives were coded as "suspicion attributions" (DeCarlo, 2005). The percentage of agreement between the two coders was 87.6%.…”

Suspicion and Perceptions of Price Fairness in Times of Crisis

“…Research in this vein includes Vonk (1998), Campbell and Kirmani (2000), and Barone et al (2004). Some researchers describe suspicious thoughts as outcomes of an activated persuasion knowledge model (PKM) (Barone et al, 2004;Campbell and Kirmani, 2000) while some others create suspicion or a suspicious mindset by manipulating the salience of a salesperson's ulterior motive (i.e., DeCarlo, 2005) or presenting the potential use of bargaining tactics (Oza et al, 2010).…”

“…In such cases, the individual generates and weighs other cues to arrive at a judgment of the actor's true intention. Suspicion has been shown to increase when ulterior motives are made salient (DeCarlo, 2005;Fein, 1996;Fein et al, 1990). In the realm of price increases, prior research has shown that announced, suggested, or presumed motives for such increases affect perceived price fairness (Bolton and Alba, 2006;Bolton et al, 2003;Campbell, 1999aCampbell, , b, 2007.…”

ATTITUDE AND PURCHASE INTENTION TOWARDS TEMPE PRODUCERS JOINING THE PROTESTS A Study in Central Java

“…Johnson (2006) employed bibliometrics in the use of this attribution theory and found that this theory has been adapted by a number of researchers such as DeCarlo (2005); Fang et al (2005). DeCarlo (2005) adapted this theory by integrating the attribution theory with persuasion theories to examine the impact of consumers' suspicion to the motives hidden by salesperson.…”