Document Type
Article
Publication Date
5-1-2003
Abstract
Trust has received a great deal of attention in the marketing literature over the past ten years especially in regard to relationship marketing. In fact, “the development and maintenance of marketing relationships has been the focus of extensive conceptual and empirical work, and trust has been established as a key component in the development of buyer-seller relationships” (Brashear, Boles, Bellenger & Brooks, 2003, p.189). Previous studies, however, have generally focused on how salespeople build trust with customers (Doney & Cannon, 1997; Ganesan, 1994) without considering other components of the relationship such as the behaviors of customers engaged in long-term sales relationships or the behaviors modeled by sales managers. We theorize, however, that the customer is not just the recipient of trust- building or trust-depleting behaviors put forth by the salesperson, but an active participant in the process. Also, regarding the establishment of trust, we believe the salesperson takes his or her cues from his/her sales manager, modeling trust-building behaviors to a customer that could be positive or negative depending on the philosophy and behaviors of the sales manager. Historically, the role of the customer in the building of trust has been an understudied phenomenon. This study will break new ground by examining the behaviors of the customer and how these behaviors may impact a salesperson’s own trust-building behaviors. We theorize that the presence or absence of trust-building behaviors exhibited by customers such as benevolence, competence and problem- solving orientation impact the building of trust with a salesperson. We believe that the salesperson, as a boundary role spanner (Singh, 1993), is uniquely affected by the degree of trust they perceive from their sales manager and customers and the impact of these perceptions is that the salesperson will reflect or model (Bandura, 1986) these behaviors ultimately affecting their own trust-building behaviors. Thus, we are looking at trust as a dynamic construct that is not one directional from the supervisor to the salesperson to the customer. Rather, we believe that trust is a mutually caused phenomenon of values, beliefs, and behaviors between the sales manager and salesperson and the salesperson and customer with resulting impact on sales performance, customer service, and customer trust. The remainder of this paper is organized as follows: the ideas discussed in the introduction are formalized into a conceptual model (Figure 1), the constructs are defined, interrelationships between the constructs are examined, hypotheses are stated, and results are shared followed by discussion and concluding thoughts.
Keywords
selling
Rights
© The Author(s). Kelvin Smith Library provides access for non-commercial, personal, or research use only. All other use, including but not limited to commercial or scholarly reproductions, redistribution, publication or transmission, whether by electronic means or otherwise, without prior written permission is strictly prohibited.
Department/Center
Design & Innovation
Recommended Citation
Cohen, Daniel, "A Reflection of Trust: Analyzing the Role of Customers and Sales Manager on Salesperson Trust-Building Behaviors" (2003). Student Scholarship. 60.
https://commons.case.edu/studentworks/60