Driving salespeople’s performance: the role of market orientation, organizational control, perceived organizational support, individual competence and individualism-collectivism

Sales management research has concentrated on examining the antecedents and consequences of salespeople’s performance. Many of the existing studies have focused on assessing the direct relationship between antecedents and the consequences of salespeople’s performance. Suggestions from sales scholars (Walker, Jr., Churchill, Jr., and Ford 1977; Bagozzi 1978) of the indirect relationships antecedents and consequences of salespeople’s performance have received little attention (Challagala and Shervani 1996; Joshi and Randall 2001). In general, this research is aimed at examining empirically the direct and indirect relationship between antecedents and consequences of salespeople’s performance. In particular, this research has examined the association between three organizational variables and two salespeople’s individual personality characteristics with performance. The hypotheses and supporting logic for linkages between the variables are drawn from several research foundation and theories, Walker, Jr., Churchill, Jr., and Ford’s (1977) model of determinants of salespeople performance, marketing organizational control and psychological theories. The proposed hypotheses were tested with data collected from salespeople working in multi-industries in the UK. Confirmatory factor analysis was utilized to assess the measurement model, and path analysis with structural equation modelling was employed to test the proposed hypotheses. The results indicate strong direct relationships between individual competencies, formal control and market orientation with salespeople’s behaviour performance, as well as important indirect relationships between formal control and salespeople’s behaviour performance. Perceived organizational support (POS) and individualism collectivism variables were found to moderate the association between formal control and behaviour performance. The findings of this research have contributed to sales management literature by adding new empirical evidence on the direct and indirect relationship between market orientation, organizational control, perceived organizational support variables, individual competence salespeople's individual characteristics and salespeople’s performance. In relation to managerial implications, the findings would be able to help managers in decision making, particularly in selecting, recruiting and managing salespeople