• Journal of Distribution Science
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• v.14 no.11
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• pp.103-115
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• 2016

Purpose - Our research started out with an assumption that a further study about the competency of B2B and B2C salespeople is needed, and has thus focused on enhancing their abilities throughout various fields. It seems that the ability of sales representatives has a positive influence on the image and revenue of the company. Since businesses find it apparent that the role of salespeople will become significant in the future, our research aims to provide a foundation for future research on exploring the necessary competencies for salespeople by conducting an in-depth interview as well as survey. Research design, data, and methodology - The methods of our research can be broken down into four steps - an interview on salespeople, eliciting salespeople's potential competency, surveys, and analysis. First, our research team conducted interviews on forty subjects. Second, we strived to elicit potential competency of salespeople based on data gained from previous studies and in-depth interviews. And Third, we came up with our own survey templates. Last but not least, our research team analyzed the results from the surveys to elicit necessary capabilities for the salespeople. Results - The results of our research show a clear distinction between B2B and B2C salespeople on all categories that we measured such as the character fitness, competence of emotion and sales marketing. As for B2B salespeople, the results indicated openness(M: 3.8265) in character fitness, and self-motivation(M: 4.1887), group cognition(M: 3.8735), teamwork(M: 3.9956) in competence of emotion, and previous research(M: 3.8735), proposal of values(M: 4.3873), cooperation with other team(M: 4.0441) in competence of sales marketing. The difference in capability required between B2B salespeople and B2C salespeople was very pronounced. Conclusions - For future studies, enhanced pool of subjects with various backgrounds is needed in order for our research to reach a wide range of population. The results from our research are advised to be used for eliciting the competency required by salespeople and for a practical application to further enhance their competency. Companies need continuous efforts to develop the skills of salespeople based on competence analysis and research of sales representatives.

• International Journal of Advanced Culture Technology
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• v.9 no.3
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• pp.92-99
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• 2021

In this research, it was investigated the competence of Korean salesmen in the insurance business(B2C, consumer goods marketing) and information communication industry(B2B, industrial goods marketing) at the individual level rather than the organizational level. The salesperson's Guanxi ability means the salesperson's ability to create, maintain, develop the Guanxi ability. Namely, it was investigated whether the Korean salesman's Guanxi ability is the effective and persuasive concept in explaining the sales performance(company performance, business performance). The purpose of this paper was to verify which variables, among Guanxi ability and customer orientation, better explain the sales performance of salespeople. The Western concept of marketing that is closest to Guanxi is the concept of the customer-orientation that is based on the theory of relationship exchange. Confucian culture in the East is the construct concept, Guanxi is the measurement. The relational exchange theory in the West is the construct concept, customer orientation is the measurement. As the result of the analysis, we found that the Guanxi proved a greater correlation with sales performance than customer orientation. In the information technology industry, there was a big difference compared to insurance industry, whereas Guanxi and customer orientation had a similar level of correlation with sales performance. In the case of the insurance industry, we found that the Guanxi and sales performance were significant but the customer orientation and sales performance were not. This means that sales performance can be accurately and sufficiently explained only by adding the Guanxi ability in addition to customer orientation. The result of analyzing the mediating effect of the Guanxi ability between customer orientation and company performance, customer orientation was significant with Guanxi, and customer orientation and company performance were also significant. But, when the Guanxi was used as the parameter, the Guanxi was significant with company performance, but the customer orientation was not. Even when the dependent variable was business performance, when the Guanxi was used as the parameter, we found that the Guanxi was significant with the business performance, but the customer orientation was not. Namely, it proved Guanxi ability and customer orientation are completely independent concepts. In addition, we found that the information technology industry, unlike the insurance industry, mediated the Guanxi ability between customer orientation and sales performance. We confirmed that in the future, salespeople should not only rely on rational methods to maintain and reinforce customer relationships, but must consider the emotional factors through empathy with customers.

• Asia-Pacific Journal of Business Venturing and Entrepreneurship
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• v.17 no.5
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• pp.205-221
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• 2022

In this study, the authors investigated the effect of salesperson's Selling Influence Tactics (SIT) on customers' psychological obligation, trust in salespersons and repurchase intentions in the offline cosmetics purchase channel. In addition, we examined the moderating effect of service quality perceived by customers. To this end, a survey was conducted on 298 customers who had purchased cosmetics through the offline sales channel, and the authors conducted hypothesis testing through a structural equation model. As a result of the study, first, among salesperson's sales influence tactics, emotional appeal tactics (H1a), customer ingratiation tactics (H1d), and personal appeal tactics (H1e) were found to affect the psychological obligation of customers, and emotional appeal tactics (H2a), rational persuasion tactics (H2b), information provision tactics (H2c), and customer ingratiation tactics (H2d) were found to affect trust in salespeople. Third, it was found that the psychological obligation did not have a positive (+) effect on the customer's repurchase intention, and the customer's trust in the salesperson had a positive (+) effect on the repurchase intention. Third, perceived service quality showed a significant moderating effect between psychological obligation and repurchase intention, trust in salesperson and repurchase intention. In previous studies on salesperson's Selling Influence Tactics (SIT), many studies examined salesperson's Selling Influence Tactics (SIT) by specifying sub-variables in a limited way, and studies confirming marketing factors such as repurchase intention were also insufficient. Therefore, the results of the empirical research confirmed based on this study are expected to help the standard or direction of the salesperson's Selling Influence Tactics (SIT) in future studies. In addition, this study describes implications for providing help in employee education and management for small business owners who manage and operate offline cosmetics stores, and sales strategies that should be strategically established to improve perceived service quality for customers.