• Journal of Distribution Science
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• v.17 no.1
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• pp.105-115
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• 2019

Purpose - Previous research has shown that a very high level and a very low level of job scope can both be more stressful than intermediate levels of job scope. This study investigates the potential positive and negative effects of the number of accounts handled by sales personnel. The primary objective of this paper is to examine how the number of accounts salespeople handle affects their stress and performance. Research design, data, and methodology - This research conducted the data collection using a survey of salespeople in the pharmaceutical industry. I sent the survey to 420 salespeople, and received 318 usable responses. To assess measurement reliability and validity, I ran an exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis. I also employed structural equation modeling (SEM) to test all hypothesized effects in AMOS and also measured the interaction variable using Ping's (1996) approach. Results - These results show that there are linear and non-linear effects of the number of accounts handled by the salesperson on both role ambiguity and role conflict. First, the number of accounts handled by a salesperson is positively related to role ambiguity and role conflict. Second, the effect of the number of accounts handled on role ambiguity and role conflict decreases as the number of accounts handled by the salesperson increases. Third, as accounts increase from a low level, role stress increases; when the number of accounts reaches an optimal level, role stress decreases; and when the number of accounts increases to a high level, it can be detrimental to the salesperson's role stress. Fourth, while product complexity is positively related to role ambiguity, brand strength is negatively related to both role ambiguity and role conflict. Fifth, the greater the brand strength, the weaker the relationship will be between the number of accounts handled and salesperson role ambiguity. Finally, role ambiguity is positively related to salesperson performance. Conclusion - Too much and too little accounts increase the role ambiguity and role conflict of salespersons. Managers should identify the complex effect of the number of accounts handled by salespeople. Also, when products are complex, managers should provide training to eliminate any complex processes and complex information. These results suggest ways to decrease salespersons' role stress by ensuring an optimal level of the number of accounts and brand strength.

• Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society
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• v.19 no.11
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• pp.182-190
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• 2018

Many pharmaceutical companies operate the SFA system to support salespeople. The SFA system is used for various behaviors of salespeople. However, there is a lack of empirical analysis on the performance of SFA in Korea. The purpose of this study is to investigate the utilization of SFA system and the non - financial performance of SFA system. The subjects of the survey were 347 pharmaceutical community members who consisted of pharmaceutical salespeople and surveyed online for 18 days from March 13, 2018 to April 30, 2018. and the effective response rate was 23.1% (80/347). The analysis shows that the higher the level of SFA system utilization, the higher the non - financial performance. By type of company, the utilization level of multinational companies was higher than that of domestic companies. Among the SFA utilization level items, 1.47 points (3.65, 2.18) were higher than the domestic companies in terms of the support service items. Among the SFA performance items, foreign companies were 1.47 points (3.16, 1.69) Respectively. This suggests that the SFA development and operation method of the domestic company focuses on the management service rather than the support service for the salesperson and the customer satisfaction. Through this study, it is considered that domestic companies should strengthen sales person support and customer satisfaction information providing function when operating SFA system.

• The Journal of Industrial Distribution & Business
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• v.10 no.6
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• pp.7-17
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• 2019

Purpose - The purpose of this study is to explore how advertising for multilevel marketing brands affect the salesperson's activity including customer-salesperson interactivity, work attitude, and perceived and actual performance after the campaign. Research Design, data, and methodology - This study collects experimental data, survey data, and actual sales data and applies statistical analyses such as factor analysis, t-tests, and a structural equation model. Results - The results show that advertising campaign can enhance a salesperson's selling activities and provide wide managerial implications to a multilevel marketing firm by filling the gaps for the field of advertising research. Conclusions - Managerial implications include: i) multilevel marketing firms should consider advertising campaigns as a means of changing customer responses because advertising plays a significant role in increasing familiarity with, and knowledge of, attitudes toward the brand, which also helps salespeople interact with customers; ii) multilevel marketing firms should consider brand advertising as a means to support the sales activities of salespeople including sales effectiveness, work attitudes, and perceived performance, and iii) multilevel marketing firms should consider brand advertising as a means to enhance a salesperson's pride and motivation for selling their brand, which will lead to improved sales performances.

• Journal of Distribution Science
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• v.17 no.4
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• pp.41-50
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• 2019

Purpose - The purpose of this study is to examine the impact of leader-member exchange (LMX) on employees' behaviors as well as to test the mediating roles of feeling trusted in the relationships. Research design, data, and methodology - Survey data were collected and analyzed from 285 sales people who work for various organizations in eastern China. The corresponding research models were verified using SPSS 22 and Amos 22. Results - The empirical results show that LMX plays a positive role in job performance and is positively related with subordinate's feelings of trust. However, the study was shown to have negative correlations between LMX and workplace ostracism. Feeling trusted by superiors mediated the relationship between LMX and job performance, resulting in employees being more motivated to do better, creating a positive synergetic effect. However, this relationship did not show to have significant mediating effects on the relationship between LMX and workplace ostracism. Conclusions - This study further enriches the relevant theory of LMX and has significance for management practices such as distribution sectors, guiding leaders to create a suitable team atmosphere. Leaders need to pay attention to build a high quality LMX with employees based on the empirical results of this study.

• The Research Journal of the Costume Culture
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• v.29 no.6
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• pp.865-880
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• 2021

The purpose of this study was to examine job competencies for sales training program development to maximize profits in fashion retailing. An empirical online survey was conducted from September to December 2019, and data was collected from 200 salespeople and store managers working in fashion stores. Results were analyzed using frequency analysis, factor analysis, variance analysis, and regression analysis with SPSS 25.0. The major findings of this study were as follows. First, the most important job competencies identified by fashion store managers were: sales sense know-how, customer service skills, and sales person's fashion style sense, product knowledge, fashion marketing and customer management. The job competency factors for sales training programs included empathy with the customer, product knowledge, communications and networking, basic job requirement, and sales skills. These five factors positively influenced the employment intentions and expectations of work performance of graduates. These factors also had a positive influence on the need of sales training program and intention to participate in retraining. Store managers in fashion retail thought the most appropriate period for on-the-job training was either 2-4 days or more than 1 week. The results of this study can be used as a base to develop training programs for job efficiency for salespeople in fashion retailing.

• 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.

• The Journal of Asian Finance, Economics and Business
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• v.8 no.12
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• pp.485-496
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• 2021

This study explores the direct relationship between challenge and hindrance demands affecting autonomous extrinsic motivation and sales performance. In addition, we examine the mediating role of autonomous extrinsic motivation in the relationship between challenge demands, hindrance demands, and sales performance. This study explores the direct relationship between challenge and hindrance demands affecting autonomous extrinsic motivation and sales performance. In addition, we examine the mediating role of autonomous extrinsic motivation in the relationship between challenge demands, hindrance demands, and sales performance. This study proceeded in two phases comprising preliminary and prime research. First, preliminary quantitative research was conducted through face-to-face interviews with 125 observations to analyze the reliability of the scale and exploratory factor analysis to evaluate the measurements. The data collected from 431 real estate market employees shows that both challenge and hindrance demands positively and negatively affect sales performance through autonomous extrinsic motivation. Furthermore, challenge demands and hindrance demands affect positive and negative sales performance through autonomous extrinsic motivation, respectively. This study suggests that business organizations should design job demands to ensure that challenging work is suitable for employees' job positions. Thus, they will contribute to motivation and help employees achieve job performance.

• Asia Marketing Journal
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• v.18 no.1
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• pp.75-97
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• 2016

Globalization and the emergence of new markets has placed increased emphasis on cross-cultural sales and marketing research. Despite considerable advances in the personal selling literature, little is known about the cross-cultural transferability of key constructs. Given the degree to which well-accepted relational sales behaviors such as ASB and customer oriented selling reflect Western values such as individualism and low uncertainty avoidance, the relative efficacy of such practices in alternative cultural context is less clear. Using a Korean sample, our results confirm the beneficial direct effects of these relational selling practices upon performance. However, we also find strong workgroup interdependence diminishes the effects of ASB and that performance fully mediates the relationship between both sales behaviors and job satisfaction. In contrast to prior results, we find female salespeople and those newer to their position demonstrate stronger ASB.

• Asia Marketing Journal
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• v.11 no.2
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• pp.37-51
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• 2009

Although previous studies have made significant progress in adaptive selling behavior (ASB), few studies have considered salesperson's customer orientation (CO) and learning behavior as determinants of effective sales management (ASB and relationship-making efforts), despite the discussion of important roles of these constructs. The authors test not only the relationships of salesperson's CO and market-based learning behavior to ASB and relationship-making efforts, but also the effects of ASB on relationship-making efforts and performance. The results of the study, which is done with samples of salespeople from Korean companies, indicate that salesperson's CO and market-based learning behavior are identified as significant determinants of ASB. Moreover, both salesperson's ASB and relationship-making efforts have significant effects on sales performance. On the other hand, as per salesperson's relationship-making efforts, salesperson's CO has a positive effect, but salesperson's market-based learning behavior and ASB do not influence his or her relationship-making efforts, which suggest a provocative possibility of conceptualization regarding the relationship between ASB and relationship management efforts.

• Journal of Digital Convergence
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• v.15 no.12
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• pp.195-202
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• 2017

Previous studies on salesperson's performance have concentrated on increasing job satisfaction through compensations and benefits or effective communication processes and have not sufficiently considered the emotional aspect of salesperson's selling behaviors. The purpose of this study is to investigate informal learning and positive psychological capital on the relationship between job satisfaction and customer orientation of IT salespeople. Data were collected from 159 IT salespeople and analyzed by structural equation modeling (SEM). As a result, it was found that the informal learning of IT salesperson had a significantly positive impact on positive psychological capital. Positive psychological capital was significantly affect on job satisfaction and customer orientation. Positive psychological capital mediated the relationship between informal learning and job satisfaction/customer orientation. The results of this study suggest that there is a need to develop informal learning based on positive psychology and to strengthen the reflected job satisfaction and customer orientation.