The influence of an organisation's perceived market orientation on the personality trait profile of its salespeople

D.Comm.The market orientation construct describes the behaviours and activities necessary for an organisation to become market oriented - in other words reflect its adoption of the marketing concept. In this study an organisation's perceived level of market orientation was determined using salespeople to assess the extent to which their organisations exhibited market oriented behaviours. The results obtained revealed that on the whole salespeople tend to see their organisation as having above average levels of market orientation. Market oriented organisations provide salespeople with a support system that enable them to provide their customers with optimal satisfaction since everyone in the organisation is focused on this objective. Salespeople operating in market oriented organisations will tend to experience less role stress than those salespeople operating in organisations with lower levels of market orientation. Salespeople with certain personality traits are better able to cope with role stress and therefore these individuals would probably be found in organisations with low levels of market orientation. In this study the personality trait profiles of salespeople working for organisations with different perceived levels of market orientation were determined and the results obtained were correlated with their perceptions of their organisations level of market orientation. The results obtained revealed that there was a correlation between two of the salesperson's personality traits namely, gregarious and energies and their organisation's perceived level of market orientation. The personality dimensions measured in this study were also used to develop a model whereby one could predict 68% ofthe overall respondents correctly in terms of their customer or competitor orientations. Two factors namely apprehensive and conservative, with a negative loading entered into the model in this order, would enable one to predict the salesperson's dominant orientation