Publication Type

Journal Article

Version

publishedVersion

Publication Date

6-2009

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to investigate how salespeople's renqing orientation and self-esteem jointly affect their selling behavior. Data were obtained from a survey of salespeople from 17 pharmaceutical and consumer-goods companies in Taiwan (n = 216).Salespeople's renqing orientation (i.e., their propensity to adhere to the accepted norm of reciprocity) compensates the negative effect of self-esteem on their selling behaviors, such as adaptive selling and hard work. Our study results underscore the critical role of the character trait of renqing orientation in a culture emphasizing a norm of reciprocity. Therefore, it would be useful to consider a strategy of recruiting salespeople with either a high self-esteem or a combination of high renqing orientation and low self-esteem. The existing literature of industrial/ organizational psychology and marketing primarily relies on constructs that are derived from Western cultural contexts. However, the present paper extended these literatures by investigating the possible joint effects of self-esteem with a trait originated from the Chinese culture on salespeople's selling behaviors.

Keywords

Self-esteem, Renqing orientation, Selling behavior, Taiwan

Discipline

Applied Behavior Analysis | Asian Studies | Psychology | Sales and Merchandising

Research Areas

Psychology

Publication

Journal of Business and Psychology

Volume

24

Issue

2

First Page

193

Last Page

200

ISSN

0889-3268

Identifier

10.1007/s10869-009-9099-z

Publisher

Springer

Copyright Owner and License

Authors

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Additional URL

https://doi.org/10.1007/s10869-009-9099-z

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