Dimensionality of the SOC

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These results indicate that the four subscales of the SOC do not represent dimensions of a unified construct, but rather dimensions of two related constructs. The first construct represents consumer tendencies when face-to-face with a salesperson. The second construct represents consumer tendencies in their thoughts and behaviors toward salespeople when not in face-to-face contact.

Should the SOC scale be broken up into two scales to measure the two individual constructs? We think not. The SOC is defined as “the enduring disposition of a consumer to engage in particular salesperson-related thoughts and behaviors across a variety of marketplace encounters with salespeople.” While we believe that salesperson-related thoughts and behaviors occupy a common place in consumer marketplace metacognition, there is no reason to impose that salesperson-related thoughts and behaviors have a single unifying construct. The four subscales of the SOC appear to measure two constructs, both of which are important and useful for the study of consumer behavior.

In study 5, participants responded to a number of vignettes about marketplace behavior relating to salespeople. The associations between vignette responses and SOC scale measures demonstrate the predictive validity of the scale, and serve to elucidate the nature of the orientations measured by the SOC.

Study 5a was administered to 164 undergraduate students in exchange for extra credit in their marketing course. Each participant responded to four vignettes, each vignette separated by a different personality scale measure. Finally, after a filler task, they filled out the SOC scale. Study 5b was administered to 179 undergraduate students, again for extra credit in a marketing course. In this study, we asked participants about two more common salesperson interactions along with measurement of the SOC scale.

All vignettes asked participants to imagine themselves in a particular retail shopping situation. We then asked their likelihood of engaging in a particular action. Participants responded to each likelihood question on a 6-point Unlikely-Likely Likert Scale. Because the various subscales are correlated, we present the Type III Sum of Squares estimates from a regression model of the vignette response with the four subscale scores as independent variables. This analysis, rather than give the raw correlation, gives the unique contribution of the subscale to the behavior queried in each vignette. Table 6 shows the results for the four vignettes from Study 5a and the two from Study 5b.

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Scented Lotion

Suppose you are shopping for a gift for your mother. You decide to buy her some scented lotion. You smell a scent that you like, but it is probably not your favorite. Just as you are about to put it away to look for another, one of the salesclerks exclaims, ‘That scent is our top seller. Everyone seems to absolutely love it!’ How likely would you be to buy that scent?

You are looking to buy a new car, and have decided on a particular model. Your sibling has bought several cars before and enjoys the negotiation process. Your sibling offers to negotiate for a car for you so you don't have to hassle with the salespeople.  Your sibling understands you very well, and will probably make a good decision.  How likely would you be to take your sibling up on the offer?

Version 1: You have been shopping for jeans at a mall retailer for the last half hour. You have had a very difficult time finding a pair that fits right. During the full half hour of shopping, one of the salesclerks, though not especially friendly, has nonetheless repeatedly helped you find jeans in the right size, color, style, etc. With the help of the salesclerk, you finally find a pair of jeans you like, but as you go to purchase them, you find out they are $10 more expensive than you originally wanted to pay.  How likely would you be to purchase the pants anyway?

We were surprised to find that the subscale that best predicted response in this case was Information Seeking, not Self Presentation. In the unfriendly version, Information Seeking was significantly related to likelihood of purchase (t = 3.1, p < .01). In the friendly version, none of the subscales was significant (all p’s > .2). It seems everyone valued the friendly salesperson’s help, thus were likely to buy the expensive jeans. But in the unfriendly case, only those who like salesperson input, even from an unfriendly salesperson, were more likely to purchase the jeans. (Table 5 presents the results from the pooled data, ignoring version.)

You are looking to buy a new backpack for school purposes.  There is only one store in the city that sells the type of backpacks you are looking for. On the other hand, you could buy the backpack on-line. Given the following characteristics of the store in town, where would you prefer to buy the backpack?

Large sales staff

Located adjacent to popular shopping mall

Has preferred backpack in stock

Our expectations were partially confirmed. Those high on Informational Influence were more likely to choose the retail store over shopping online. Though the internet is known as a source of limitless information, some people value in-person feedback much more than the information found online. Consumers high on Convinceability were more likely to choose shopping online. This was not in line with our expectations, which were that those high on Avoidance would be more likely to shop online. Nevertheless, this result is logical, in that those who are easily convinced by salespeople would prefer to get information about products and choose them in an environment where they won’t be pressured or convinced by a salesperson.

A door-to-door salesman comes by your place selling coupon books.  You look through the coupon book and notice that you use very few of the stores in the book.  However, the salesman very convincingly shows how valuable the coupon book is and demonstrates how you could easily get your money back within a few weeks by using the coupons.

How likely would you be to buy the coupon book?
Here, participants see slightly conflicting information. They don’t use the stores in the coupon book, making it a poor value. However, the salesperson is convincing in his/her presentation of the value of the coupon book. We expected that Convinceable consumers would side with the convincing arguments of the salesperson. As predicted, those high on Convinceability were much more likely to purchase the coupon book.
Study 5b: Ugly Shirt

You are in a mall clothing store shopping for shirts.  You try on one shirt you find intriguing, but after looking at yourself in the mirror, you decide it doesn't at all match your taste.  You are about to go back into the changing room to take it off when one of the salesclerks tells you the shirt is incredible and makes you look very fashionable.  The shirt is well within your price range.

How likely would you be to buy the shirt?
This vignette pushes the limit of salesperson influence over consumers as a function of their types on the SOC scale. It is similar to the scented lotion vignette, in that it gauges consumer likelihood to take a salesperson’s advice contrary to original intentions. The difference comes in the strength of the intention. Whereas the lotion was at first pleasant but not quite enough for purchase, here the shirt is not at first desirable at all. As with the scented lotion vignette, we expected Information Seeking consumers to purchase the shirt with a higher likelihood. Our expectations were met. Those who value salesperson input were more likely to change their intentions and purchase the shirt, as with the lotion vignette. The result diverged from the lotion vignette in that consumers high on Convinceability were more likely to change their intention, but those high on Sales Presentation were not. It seems that Self Presentation concerns can influence consumers to choose a product when they are on the fence, but only those high on Convinceability can be influenced to change a strong previous intention.
General Discussion

Consumer heterogeneity in salesperson orientation can have drastic impacts on the market. Consider the experience of one of the authors of this paper, who needed to purchase a car upon graduation. Having long been an admirer of both Lexus and Audi, the author spent a few weeks deliberating between two cars from these brands, before finally purchasing a Nissan from a fleet dealer that could be purchased without negotiation. In this case, the author (who is high on Avoidance), instead of profiting Lexus or Audi several thousand dollars, profited Nissan due to their marketing of a different sales process. Marketers need to develop a better understanding of the dimensions of consumer heterogeneity in the realm of salesperson orientation so they can better manage the customer-salesperson interaction.

The dimensions of Information Seeking and Avoidance require a careful balancing act for many managers. Salespeople are needed to aid the purchase decisions of those high on Information Seeking, but the presence of too many salespeople will keep high Avoidance consumers out of the store or out of the market. The optimal size of the sales force will be larger in markets whose consumers are less informed, but high Avoidance consumers may still desire sales-free purchasing in such markets. Providing sufficient sales help to Information Seeking customers without pushing the Avoidance consumers away is especially tricky in these markets.

The real estate market uses a sales structure that resolves these opposing forces. The real estate “agent” on the buyer’s side has little incentive for anything other than getting the consumer to buy a house, but the structure of the sales relationship helps make consumers feel that their salesperson is looking out for their best interests. Several types of insurance are also sold in a way to capture the whole spectrum of the Avoidance subscale. An insurance “broker” finds the insurance that best suits the consumer, thus he/she is not perceived as a salesperson to be avoided. Such sales structures may appease consumers on the high end of the Avoidance scale, but they certainly do not guarantee protection for those high on the Convinceability scale, as the recent sub-prime mortgage crisis illustrates. Mortgage “brokers” were able to sell mortgages to people who could not afford them, likely aided by the fact that the structure of the sales relationship implied that the mortgage salesperson acted in the best interests of the consumer.

The automobile industry has done little to manage the opposing forces of Information Seeking and Avoidance. Likely, the industry trusts that the need for a car is strong enough that even the strongest Avoider will make his/her way into a dealership for a new car. It ensures this by funneling interested buyers to dealers rather than selling directly to them online. Once an Avoider enters into negotiation with a salesperson for a new car, he/she will want to avoid starting the process anew with a different salesperson, so he/she will be motivated to purchase the car. Knowing the consumer is unlikely to walk away from the negotiation, the salesperson can then concentrate on extracting as much value from the consumer as possible. It is no wonder that car salespeople have poor reputations— there is no mechanism in the sales relationship to encourage the car salesperson to act more ethically.

Consumers high on Convinceability are prone to encounter sales situations that could end with them making unwanted purchases. Salespeople who encounter highly Convinceable consumers often have little incentive to not take advantage of the tendency. Wernerfelt (1994) shows that it is in the salesperson’s best interest not to oversell a Convinceable consumer if the consumer is likely to make repeat purchases. This incentive is extremely weak in many sales relationships. Even when the consumer can be expected to make repeat purchases, the salesperson still has a strong incentive to oversell consumers if future purchases from the consumer are not guaranteed to go through the same salesperson. Managers may be able to encourage better sales behavior from their sales staff by ensuring that salespeople get to keep past customers.

The reputation of a salesperson spread by word of mouth is another mechanism that keeps salespeople from overselling Convinceable consumers. This mechanism only functions strongly in industries where consumer loyalty to the salesperson comes before loyalty to a product, such as real estate and insurance. In many retail environments, a reputation for overselling goes to the retailer, not the unnamed salesperson. Convinceable consumers need to be especially cautious in such environments, as the salesperson has an incentive to oversell.

The existence of the Self Presentation subscale highlights a function of salespeople not before researched. The presence of salespeople in a retail outlet engenders an atmosphere where purchase is an implied requirement. Consumers high on the Self Presentation scale feel bad browsing in a store and then not purchasing. The presence of salespeople in a store will increase sales from such consumers even without pushing sells or providing useful help to the consumer. Of course, sales increase further once consumers obligate themselves to the salesperson by accepting sales assistance.

This same subscale is often used by high-end retailers to keep non-customers out of the store. Excessive browsing by consumers who have no intention of purchasing is expensive. For this reason, high-end retailers have an overly large sales staff. Customers with purchase intentions receive all the help they need, while those without purchase intention feel guilty and leave.
Future Research

The current focus of the scale was on the orientation of consumers toward salespeople. Corporate buyers are trained for interaction with salespeople, thus their orientations towards salespeople are likely to differ from consumer orientations. Though heterogeneity in their orientations doubtless exists, the structure of this heterogeneity is likely to differ from that found in our samples. Corporate buyers could hardly do their job if they actively sought to avoid salesperson interaction, and they would not likely keep their job long if they were easily convinced to purchase what the salesperson offered. If corporate buyers vary less on these factors, do other factors exist that better explain salesperson orientation among corporate buyers?

Salesperson orientations are also likely to differ greatly among cultures. Market structures across cultures necessitate varied amounts of salesperson contact. In cultures with a high level of consumer-salesperson interaction, consumers could have developed different orientations than consumers in markets with less interaction. Whether this variation in orientations would result in a different score on the SOC scale or a vastly different scale structure is a question we encourage future research to explore.

Another potential expansion of the current research is to examine the effect of salesperson orientation on post-purchase processes. Those who score high on the Convinceability dimension have likely come to recognize this property in themselves due to past experiences wherein they have been convinced to purchase items they came to regret. Obviously, a retailer would be very myopic to encourage the sales staff to take advantage of these consumers, as they would likely never become repeat customers. However, our scale is not capable of identifying consumers who are also easily convinced, but due to cognitive dissonance (Cohen and Goldberg 1970), become convinced they have made a good purchase. If a sizeable population of consumers exists for which this is the case, perhaps high-pressure sales can (unfortunately) be recommended for some.

That many consumers actively avoid contact with salespeople raises several questions for future research. To what extent do consumers maintain and update knowledge on salesperson characteristics of retailers? If salesperson characteristics occupy a significant portion of consumers’ brand-related thought, this could be a source of competitive advantage that has not been adequately researched.

The SOC scale may prove useful in transformative consumer research targeting the improvement of consumer welfare among vulnerable consumer groups such as those individuals that are likely to be victims of high-pressure selling. Consider one of the papers cited previously in this paper. Gerstner and Hess (1990) demonstrate that “bait and switch” can be beneficial to consumers, but their model is predicated on the assumption that salespeople do not upsell consumers to products they do not desire. The scale presented here shows some evidence that this is not the case for many consumers. Public policy regarding “bait and switch” could be better informed through use of the SOC scale to measure consumer tendencies in this regard. Furthermore, future research might investigate relationships among the different dimensions of the SOC scale and decision variables in consumer purchase situations of heightened consumer vulnerability (funeral planning, home mortgage).

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