Content area
Abstract
This research examined the role of motivated reasoning and learning/performance orientations in salespeople's adaptive selling, focusing on the early stage of the sales process. The study also explored the potential differences between salespeople in the different organizational cultures by investigating three Korean firms and one US insurance firm operating in Korea.
The main objective was to investigate whether high-performing salespeople are more or less likely to be adaptive in personal selling, focusing on how salespeople's cognitive processing is mediated by their own motivations. Another objective was to develop motivated reasoning scales which can be easily used through a pencil-and-paper method.
The study developed motivated reasoning scales and tested the relationship with other related constructs successfully. Further, the study found that learning-oriented salespeople rather than performance-oriented are likely to be high performers because they are more likely to adopt accuracy goals, and that salespeople with accuracy goals are likely to employ adaptive selling which increases performance. The study also found that salespeople adjust their own motivational structures according to their organizational cultures. The study concludes by suggesting accuracy goals as a key to success among salespeople.
The managerial implications suggest the instillation of learning orientations among salespeople in order to foster accuracy goals which will, in turn, increase adaptive selling. The investigation of how accuracy goals affect adaptiveness is suggested for future research. Finally, the study suggests how to develop better scales for learning and performance orientations.
