Journal of Personal Selling & Sales Management, vol. XXXII, no. 4 (fall 2012), pp. 437–449.© 2012 PSE National Educational Foundation. All rights reserved. Permissions: www.copyright.com

ISSN 0885–3134 (print) / ISSN 1557–7813 (online)DOI: 10.2753/PSS0885-3134320403

Organizational outcomes often depend on the “biases and dispositions of their most powerful actors—their top execu-tives” (Hambrick 2007, p. 334). The upper echelons theory (Hambrick and Mason 1984) views an organization as a reflection of its top managers. The cognitive bases and values of top managers are among the upper echelon characteristics that determine their strategic choices (Hambrick and Mason 1984). Several empirical studies have confirmed the influence of top managers in shaping the behaviors of employees. For example, drawing on social learning theory, Lam, Kraus, and Ahearne (2010) concluded that the implementation of market orientation depends on top management, who serve as role models through their market-oriented actions. Wieseke et al. argued that “what leaders do, feel, and think should have a profound impact on followers” (2009, p. 126). Based on social identity, emotional contagion, and consistency-driven assimilation theories, Wieseke et al. found empirical support for a cascading effect of middle managers’ organizational identification on salespeople’s organizational identification. Social learning theory also predicted that ethical leadership trickles down from top management to lower-level employees

(Mayer et al. 2009). Consequently, organizational outcomes can be viewed as “reflections of the values and cognitive bases of powerful actors in the organization” (Hambrick and Mason 1984, p. 193).

Given the importance of top managers in shaping their organizations, past studies have examined the role of top man-agement in selling contexts. These studies included the effects of top management commitment on salespeople’s adoption of sales force automation technologies (Cascio, Mariadoss, and Mouri 2010), the role of top management diversity on the effect of customer orientation on organizational performance (Auh and Menguc 2006), the moderating roles of top manag-ers in developing customer support services (Gebauer 2007), and the role of top management involvement in key account management effectiveness (Workman, Homburg, and Jensen 2003). However, many of these studies have focused on the perceptions of managers rather than salespeople (e.g., Auh and Menguc 2006; Gebauer 2007; Workman, Homburg, and Jensen 2003). Since behavior can be driven by perceptions rather than reality (Ward et al. 2007), customer-oriented sell-ing may be affected by salespeople’s perceptions of the values of top management.

Customer-oriented selling can be viewed “as the practice of the marketing concept at the level of the individual salesperson and customer” (Saxe and Weitz 1982, p. 343). Salespeople are expected to engage in customer-oriented selling to develop long-term relationships with customers (Williams 1998). Customer-oriented selling is also a significant predictor of sales performance (e.g., Franke and Park 2006; Jaramillo et al. 2007; Martin and Bush 2006). Consequently, it is important

The Role of Top ManageMenT in Developing a CusToMeR-oRienTeD sales foRCe

subhra Chakrabarty, gene Brown, and Robert e. Widing ii

A national random sample of industrial salespeople was surveyed to examine the effects of salespeople’s perceptions of top management long-term orientation, top management emphasis, and top management risk aversion on customer-oriented selling behaviors. The results indicated that perceived top management long-term orientation had a significantly positive effect on perceived top management emphasis and a significantly negative effect on perceived top management risk aver-sion. In turn, perceived top management emphasis positively affected customer-oriented selling, whereas perceived top management risk aversion did not affect customer-oriented selling. The study underscores the importance of salespeople’s perceptions of top management factors for implementing the marketing concept. The managerial implications of these findings are discussed and several directions for future research are proposed.

subhra Chakrabarty (DBA, Louisiana Tech University), Visiting Associate Professor of Marketing, College of Business and Econom-ics, American University of Kuwait, Safat, Kuwait, schakrabarty@auk.edu.kw.

gene Brown (Ph.D., University of Alabama), Valentine Radford/Missouri Professor of Marketing, Henry W. Bloch School of Busi-ness and Public Administration, University of Missouri–Kansas City, Kansas City, MO, brownge@umkc.edu.

Robert e. Widing ii (Ph.D., Ohio State University), Dean and Pro-fessor, Weatherhead School of Management, Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, OH, rew99@case.edu.

The authors thank the editor and two anonymous reviewers for their helpful suggestions on an earlier version of this paper.

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for organizations to develop a customer-oriented sales force. Past studies have identified several organizational determinants of customer-oriented selling, such as “culture, customer/market orientation, climate, and ethics training” (Schwepker 2003, p. 153), salespeople’s perceived customer value orienta-tion and role stress (Flaherty, Dahlstrom, and Skinner 1999), supervisory leadership style and salespeople’s perceptions of psychological climate and empowerment (Martin and Bush 2006), and relational environment and the quality of leader–member exchange (Paparoidamis and Guenzi 2009). Several individual determinants of customer-oriented selling have also been examined, such as salespersons’ skills, motivation and training (Pettijohn, Pettijohn, and Taylor 2002), and salespeople’s emotional intelligence and organizational com-mitment (Rozell, Pettijohn, and Parker 2004).

Although several determinants of customer-oriented sell-ing have been studied, there is a paucity of studies on the effects of salespeople’s perceptions of top management on customer-oriented selling. Based on a review of the literature on customer-oriented selling, Schwepker recommended that a customer-oriented sales force can be developed by building a customer-oriented environment “through the CEO’s [chief executive officer’s] vision, that takes a customer perspective, empowers members to develop creative solutions to customer problems, and displays respect for organizational members and customers” (2003, p. 164). Consequently, salespeople’s percep-tions of the values of top managers may have a direct effect on customer-oriented selling. Although top management can indirectly influence customer-oriented selling by shaping the culture and climate of selling organizations, salespeople need to believe that top managers are truly committed to customer-oriented selling for two reasons.

First, top management commitment may compensate for deficiencies in organizational climate that are detrimental to organizational success. For example, Rodríguez, Pérez, and Gutiérrez (2008) found that while developing new products, departments depend more heavily on interfunctional commu-nication for new product cooperation when they do not feel supported by top managers. The authors also concluded that “the positive effect of effective interfunctional coordination on cooperation is significantly more intense when the R&D department perceives that top management is risk averse” (Rodríguez, Pérez, and Gutiérrez 2008, p. 127). Thus, top management support and risk aversion may compensate for imperfections in the organizational climate that might hinder customer-oriented selling.

Second, although immediate supervisors are responsible for monitoring the implementation of strategies, they exist in the “work-a-day world of constant objective feedback and evaluation” (Katz and Kahn 1966, p. 318). The charisma of top managers may result in an emotional tie “between the upper echelons of a system and its rank-and-file membership”

(Katz and Kahn 1966, p. 318). Since top management is responsible for developing a customer-oriented organization (Webster 1988), and their customer orientation is expected to affect employee–customer orientation (Liao and Subramony 2008), salespeople’s perceptions of the role of top management in customer-oriented selling should be of interest to academi-cians and practitioners.

Although salespeople are expected to be influenced by top management, their perceptions of top management have not been studied extensively. Based on a study of salespeople’s perceptions of top management, Sager reported that a large percentage of salespeople were dismayed by the “lack of atten-tion from upper management, lack of caring on the part of upper management, upper management’s failure to get input from the field, and upper management’s over-concern with the almighty buck” (1999, p. 63). Sager argued that an increased focus on the bottom line and a short time horizon on planning and evaluation by senior management were among the factors that contributed to these negative attitudes of salespeople. Moore (2007) argued that if top management fails to focus on the pipeline of the next generation of high growth opportuni-ties and forces salespeople to sell them in the current period, salespeople may develop compensating behaviors. There are three time horizons for the fiscal management of the portfolio of products of firms. Horizon 1 is short term and represents the current fiscal-reporting period, Horizon 2 is a pipeline of high-growth opportunities for the next generation, and Horizon 3 represents new businesses for the future. If top management had a short-term horizon on planning and evalu-ation, salespeople may use these “Horizon 2” innovations as baits to sell more of the “established Horizon 1 products and services,” or “bundle the Horizon 2 offerings with Horizon 1 products” (Moore 2007, p. 86).

Salespeople develop their roles by decoding the communi-cated expectations from role partners, developing their own perceptions, and converting these perceptions into behaviors (Johnston and Marshall 2011). As a member of salespeople’s role set, top managers are expected to influence the behaviors of salespeople. Although sales supervisors may also influence salesperson behaviors, such as customer-oriented selling (Martin and Bush 2003), salespeople may perceive that the actions of the selling organization are different from that of sales managers (Jones, Busch, and Dacin 2003). The main goal of this study was to measure the effects of salespeople’s perceptions of top management factors on their own customer-oriented selling behaviors and recommend strategies for selling organizations. Specifically, the study focused on the relation-ships among perceived top management long-term orienta-tion, perceived top management emphasis, and perceived top management risk aversion, and analyzed the effects of these top management factors on customer-oriented selling. Figure 1 summarizes these relationships.

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BaCKgRounD anD DevelopMenT of hYpoTheses

Social learning theory (Bandura 1977) predicts that individual behavior is determined by the environment and the values and orientations of important social referents. Based on social learning theory, customer-oriented selling of salespeople may depend on perceived organizational environment and per-ceived orientations of important social referents, such as top managers. In the following sections, the relationships among perceived top management emphasis, perceived top manage-ment risk aversion, perceived top management long-term orientation, and customer-oriented selling are explored.

Top Management emphasis

Jaworski and Kohli (1993) argued that top management emphasis and top management risk aversion should affect a firm’s market orientation. Top management emphasis was conceptualized as the continuous emphasis by top managers to employees regarding the need for “ongoing tracking and responding to market developments” (Jaworski and Kohli 1993, p. 63). Since a high customer orientation “can be viewed as an extension of the marketing concept from the level of the firm to the level of the individual salesperson and customer” (Saxe 1979, pp. 15–16), high levels of perceived top manage-ment emphasis should encourage salespeople to track and respond to changes in customer needs to ensure long-term profitability. Given that identifying and satisfying customer needs in the long run is at the core of customer-oriented sell-ing, perceived top management emphasis is expected to be positively related to customer-oriented selling. Therefore, the following hypothesis is proposed:

Hypothesis 1: A salesperson’s perceived top management emphasis will be positively related to his or her customer-oriented selling.

Top Management Risk aversion

Top management risk aversion can be defined as top manag-ers’ “unwillingness to accept occasional failures as a normal part of business” (Menon, Jaworski, and Kohli 1997, p. 190). Thus, for top managers with high risk aversion, failure is not an option. Because these top managers do not like to lose, they may be unwilling to take the risks of customer-oriented selling. For example, Jaworski and Kohli (1993) found support for a negative relationship between top management risk aversion and market orientation. Their rationale was that highly risk-averse managers will avoid taking the risks associated with the launching of new products and services, even if changing market conditions dictate such actions. Salespeople that are successful at implementing customer-oriented selling gener-ally possess a range of alternative solutions to satisfy needs of customers and have the ability to recommend the optimum solution (Saxe and Weitz 1982). Consequently, the potential for occasional failures is inherent in customer-oriented selling. Saxe and Weitz (1982) reported that the correlation between customer-oriented selling and performance was significantly positive only when salespeople were able to help customers with whom they have developed long-term cooperative rela-tionships. Therefore, occasional failures of customer-oriented selling to deliver results may also occur if salespeople fail to develop long-term cooperative customer–salesperson rela-tionships. If top management is unwilling to accept these failures, perceived top management risk aversion will reduce customer-oriented selling. Salespeople will be under pressure

figure 1 hypothesized Model

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to produce immediate results since top management does not tolerate failures. Since customer-oriented selling may require salespeople “to avoid actions which sacrifice customer interest to increase the probability of making an immediate sale” (Saxe and Weitz 1982, p. 344), they may not engage in customer-oriented selling when perceived top management risk aversion is high. Formally stated:

Hypothesis 2: A salesperson’s perceived top management risk aversion will be negatively related to his or her customer-oriented selling.

Top Management long-Term orientation

Although the theoretical bases, such as upper echelons theory and social learning theory, for the effects of perceived top management emphasis and perceived top management risk aversion on customer-oriented selling exists, salespeople may wonder why top managers have a specific emphasis or what drives top managers’ attitudes toward risk. The extant literature has fallen short of identifying the determinants of perceived top management emphasis and perceived top management risk aversion, let alone measuring the perceptions of sales-people regarding them. This constitutes a significant gap in the sales literature since salespeople might be more commit-ted to implementing the marketing concept by engaging in customer-oriented selling if they knew why that is important for the selling firm and whether they have support from top management.

A potential determinant of perceived top management emphasis and perceived top management risk aversion could be top management long-term orientation. Long-term-oriented sales organizations perceive that “their outcomes are interdependent with partner outcomes, and expect joint beneficial outcomes in the long run” (Chung, Sternquist, and Chen 2006, p. 350). Ganesan argued that long-term-oriented firms “rely on relational exchanges to maximize their profits over a series of transactions” (1994, p. 3). Consequently, top managers of such firms should emphasize that salespeople must focus on building customer relationships so that long-term profitability is ensured over a series of transactions. These firms will encourage salespeople to maximize the long-run profit-ability of the selling firm. Top managers of these firms should be willing to take the risks of occasional failures to ensure the long-term survival of the firm. Consequently, salespeople’s perceptions of top management long-term orientation may affect their perceived top management emphasis.

Top management long-term orientation can be defined as the degree to which top managers believe in developing relationships with customers so that sales are maximized over a series of interactions. The long-term survival of the firm is implicit in marketing’s role in the strategic planning process

(Anderson 1982). Since selling firms’ long-term orientation promotes superior customer value creation and improves market performance (Guenzi and Troilo 2007), top managers may encourage salespeople to track and adapt to changes in the market conditions to ensure that salespeople are considering the long-run profitability of the firm. Therefore, perceived top management long-term orientation should encourage perceived top management emphasis. Formally stated:

Hypothesis 3: A salesperson’s perceived top management long-term orientation will be positively related to his or her perceived top management emphasis.

Although perceived top management long-term orientation is expected to encourage perceived top management emphasis, it should discourage perceived top management risk aversion since top managers know that strategies aimed at long-term profitability entails some short-term risks. Long-term-oriented top managers assume that over the long run, efficiencies will be achieved by investing in and utilizing idiosyncratic assets, and by sharing risks with interdependent customers (Ganesan 1994). Therefore, long-term-oriented managers are expected to have a favorable attitude toward risk, meaning, they should be less risk-averse. Consequently, perceived top management long-term orientation should discourage perceived top man-agement risk aversion. Therefore,

Hypothesis 4: A salesperson’s perceived top management long-term orientation will be negatively related to his or her perceived top management risk aversion.

MeThoD

sample and Data Collection

The data collection involved a mail survey of a national ran-dom sample of industrial salespeople in United States. The mailing list was purchased from Dun & Bradstreet, which consisted of industrial salespeople representing firms within the Standard Industrial Classification (SIC) codes 20 to 39. These SIC codes were chosen since they included a wide range of products and a wide variety of sales roles. These salespeople occupied sales positions, such as institutional seller, order taker, missionary sales, trade servicer, and trade seller. The type of products sold included food, tobacco, textiles, apparel, lumber and wood, furniture, paper, chemicals, petroleum, coal, rubber, leather, electronic and other electrical equip-ment, industrial and commercial machinery, transportation equipment, fabricated metal products, and miscellaneous manufactured products. Questionnaires were mailed to 3,909 salespeople at their places of work along with a cover letter explaining the purpose of the study, requesting cooperation, and promising confidentiality. A reminder postcard was mailed

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four weeks after the original mailing. The mailing yielded 241 usable responses. The postal service returned 42 envelopes as undeliverable. An additional 33 questionnaires were returned because the respondents were no longer with the company. After accounting for undeliverable envelopes and uncompleted questionnaires, the response rate was 6.3 percent (241/3,834). Although the response rate was low, past studies have reported low response rates in surveys. For example, Sparks and Hunt (1998) reported a response rate of 7 percent.

Ninety percent of the respondents were male, and 47.5 per-cent of the respondents were college graduates. On average, they were 47 years old and had 19 years of selling experience. A comparison of early and late respondents on the study variables yielded no significant differences. Consequently, nonresponse bias was unlikely to affect the results (Armstrong and Overton 1977).

Measures

A four-item measure of perceived top management emphasis and a six-item measure of perceived top management risk aversion was used to test the research hypotheses. These items were borrowed from Jaworski and Kohli (1993). Perceived top management long-term orientation was measured using six items that were written based on Ganesan’s (1994) measure of long-term orientation. The endpoints for these scales ranged from 1 = “very strongly disagree” to 9 = “very strongly agree.” Customer-oriented selling was measured using the 12-item customer orientation dimension of the 24-item SOCO (selling orientation–customer orientation) scale developed by Saxe and Weitz (1982). The scale ranged from 1 = “true for none of your customers—never” to 9 = “true for all of your customers—always.” The items are displayed in the Appendix.

ResulTs

Confirmatory factor analysis was used to assess the mea-surement properties of each of the latent constructs. The covariance matrix of the items of each construct was input in LISREL 8.72, and the measurement models were respecified based on theoretical (item content) and statistical (modification indices and standardized residuals) grounds. For example, the item “top managers here accept occasional new product failures as being normal” was deleted from the perceived top manage-ment risk aversion scale since product managers, rather than salespeople, are expected to be concerned about such failures. Jaworski and Kohli (1993) and Menon, Jaworski, and Kohli (1997) also eliminated that item from the top management risk aversion scale. In addition, two items measuring perceived top management long-term orientation were also eliminated based on standardized residuals and modification indices.

The partial disaggregation model proposed by Bagozzi and Heatherton (1994) was used to reduce the 12-item customer-oriented scale measure into a three-item composite by ran-domly aggregating four items into item parcels. According to Bagozzi and Heatherton, “when more than about five items per factor are treated as individual measures of factors in a multifactor CFA [confirmatory factor analysis], it is difficult to achieve a satisfactorily fitting model that is interpretable in an unambiguous sense” (1994, p. 47). Table 1 presents the fit statistics of these individual assessments.

As Table 1 indicates, the fit of the measurement models were adequate. However, the loadings of some items measur-ing perceived top management emphasis and perceived top management risk aversion were low. Following the individual assessments of the measurement properties of each latent construct, a covariance matrix of all four latent constructs was input in LISREL 8.72 where the manifest indicators were specified to load on their respective latent factors. After respeci-fications, the fit statistics of the final measurement model were satisfactory. The path estimates of the measurement model are displayed in Table 2, and the descriptive statistics and correla-tions are displayed in Table 3.

As Table 2 indicates, the overall fit of the model was ade-quate. Convergent validity was established since the t-value of each of the path estimates was significant (Anderson and Gerbing 1988). Discriminant validity was assessed by evaluat-ing the significance of Δχ2 for the constrained (correlations constrained to 1.00 for each pair of latent constructs) models and the unconstrained model. Since the fit statistics of the constrained models were significantly worse than that of the unconstrained model, discriminant validity was established (Bagozzi and Phillips 1982).

Discriminant validity was also assessed by comparing the average variances extracted to the squared correlations between each pair of constructs (Fornell and Larcker 1981). Discriminant validity was established since the smallest average variance extracted (0.39) exceeded the largest shared variance (0.34). Table 4 displays the average variances and the squared correlations.

The factor loading of one item measuring perceived top management emphasis and perceived top management risk aversion was low. These scale items were borrowed from Jaworski and Kohli (1993). While developing these scales, any assessments of unidimensionality via confirmatory factor analysis were not reported by Jaworski and Kohli. Menon, Jaworski, and Kohli (1997) also did not report any assess-ments of the unidimensionality of Jaworski and Kohli’s (1993) top management risk aversion scale. Overall, the data fit the measurement model quite well (see Table 2).

The research hypotheses were tested by running a struc-tural model in LISREL 8.72 using a covariance matrix of the

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latent constructs. The overall model fit indices, standardized parameters, and t-values are presented in Table 5.

As Table 5 shows, perceived top management emphasis was significantly positively related to customer-oriented selling. Thus, H1 was supported. H2 was only directionally sup-ported since the negative relationship between perceived top management risk aversion and customer-oriented selling was not significant. The results did support H and H4 since per-ceived top management long-term orientation was significantly positively related to perceived top management emphasis, and significantly negatively related to perceived top management risk aversion. Several managerial implications can be derived from these results.

DisCussion

In order to implement the marketing concept at the customer-salesperson level, salespeople need to engage in customer-

oriented selling (Saxe and Weitz 1982). Past research has studied various antecedents to customer-oriented selling, such as organizational factors, management control, and personal factors (Schwepker 2003). However, the role of top manage-ment in promoting customer-oriented selling has been ignored. Specifically, salespeople’s perceptions of top management factors, such as top management long-term orientation, top management emphasis, and top management risk aversion may significantly influence customer-oriented selling because salespeople may not always infer the values of the selling organization from that of their sales managers (Jones, Busch, and Dacin 2003). Although creating a customer-oriented culture may help to develop a customer-oriented sales force (Schwepker 2003), measuring salespeople’s perceptions of top management’s values and actions is crucial since perceptions may differ significantly from reality (Ward et al. 2007). This study filled a significant gap in the sales literature by assessing salespeople’s perceptions of the relationships among perceived

Table 1Measurement Models (Standardized Path Estimates)

Constructs Itemsλ

(t-Value)

Top Management Long-Term Orientation (TMLTO)1

Top management focuses on long-term goals in relationships with customers. 0.92 (18.30)

Top management is willing to make sacrifices to help customers from time to time. 0.87 (16.73)

Top management shares long-term goals with customers. 0.83 (15.27)

Top management would like to develop long-term relationships with customers. 0.88 (17.03)

Top Management Emphasis (TME)2

Top managers repeatedly tell employees that this business unit’s survival depends on its adapting to market trends.

0.58 (8.68)

Top managers often tell employees to be sensitive to the activities of our competitors. 0.56 (8.34)

Top managers keep telling people around here that they must gear up now to meet customers’ future needs.

0.83 (12.59)

According to top managers here, serving customers is the most important thing our business unit does.

0.65 (9.74)

Top Management Risk Aversion (TMRA)3

Top managers in this business unit believe that higher financial risks are worth taking for higher rewards.r

0.44 (6.44)

Top managers here encourage the development of innovative marketing strategies, knowing well that some will fail.r

0.60 (9.09)

Top managers in this business unit like to take big financial risks.r 0.84 (13.63)

Top managers in this business unit like to “play it safe.” 0.64 (9.96)

Top managers around here like to implement plans only if they are very certain that they will work.

0.60 (9.16)

1 χ2 = 1.72, df = 2, p > 0.10, SRMR = 0.00, RMSEA = 0.00, GFI = 0.99, CFI = 1.00.2 χ2 = 15.65, df = 2, p < 0.01, SRMR = 0.05, RMSEA = 0.17, GFI = 0.97, CFI = 0.95.3 χ2 = 17.75, df = 5, p < 0.01, SRMR = 0.05, RMSEA = 0.10, GFI = 0.97, CFI = 0.96.r = Reverse-scored item.

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Table 2Final Measurement Model (Standardized Path Estimates)

Constructs Itemsλ

(t-value)

Top Management Long-Term Orientation (TMLTO)

Top management focuses on long-term goals in relationships with customers. 0.92 (18.09)

Top management is willing to make sacrifices to help customers from time to time. 0.81 (14.63)

Top management shares long-term goals with customers. 0.78 (13.87)

Top management would like to develop long-term relationships with customers. 0.86 (16.13)

Top Management Emphasis (TME)

Top managers often tell employees to be sensitive to the activities of our competitors. 0.41 (6.01)

Top managers keep telling people around here that they must gear up now to meet customers’ future needs.

0.73 (11.60)

According to top managers here, serving customers is the most important thing our business unit does.

0.77 (12.46)

Top Management Risk Aversion (TMRA)

Top managers in this business unit believe that higher financial risks are worth taking for higher rewards.r

0.53 (7.32)

Top managers here encourage the development of innovative marketing strategies, knowing well that some will fail.r

0.64 (9.00)

Top managers around here like to implement plans only if they are very certain that they will work.

0.70 (9.84)

Customer-Oriented Selling (COS)

I offer the product of mine that is best suited to the customer’s problem. 0.83 (14.70)I try to get customers to discuss their needs with me.

I try to figure out what a customer’s needs are.I try to influence a customer by information rather than by pressure.I answer a customer’s questions about products as correctly as I can. 0.87

(15.57)A good salesperson has to have the customer’s best interest in mind.I try to achieve my goals by satisfying customers.I try to find out what kind of product would be most helpful to a customer.I am willing to disagree with a customer in order to help him/her make a better decision. 0.77

(13.28)I try to give customers an accurate expectation of what the product will do for them.I try to help customers achieve their goals.I try to bring a customer with a problem together with a product that helps him/her solve

that problem.

χ2 = 80.44, df = 59, p < 0.05, SRMR = 0.04, RMSEA = 0.04, GFI = 0.95, CFI = 0.99.r = Reverse-scored item.

Table 3Descriptive Statistics and Correlations

Constructs 1 2 3 4

1. Top Management Long-Term Orientation (TMLTO) 1.002. Top Management Emphasis (TME) 0.58** 1.003. Top Management Risk Aversion (TMRA) –0.39** –0.45** 1.004. Customer-Oriented Selling (COS) 0.36** 0.27** –0.16* 1.00Means 7.32 6.70 4.59 8.03Standard Deviation 1.48 1.38 1.59 0.79Coefficient α 0.90 0.67 0.67 0.86Construct Reliability (ρ) 0.91 0.68 0.66 0.86

** Correlation is significant at the 0.01 level.* Correlation is significant at the 0.05 level.

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top management long-term orientation, perceived top manage-ment emphasis, and perceived top management risk aversion, and analyzing their effects on customer-oriented selling.

The findings differ from Sager’s (1999) assertion that sales-people’s perceptions of the time horizon of top management’s planning and evaluation could be a source of salesperson disenchantment. In the current study, the mean scores for perceived top management long-term orientation, perceived top management emphasis, and perceived top management risk aversion were 7.32, 6.70, and 4.59, respectively (see Table 3). Thus, salespeople perceived that top management was long-term oriented. Consequently, salespeople agreed that top managers were long-term oriented, emphasized customer-oriented selling, and were willing to take the risks to successfully implement customer-oriented selling. While perceived top management long-term orientation increased, perceived top management emphasis increased, suggesting that salespeople attributed top managements’ emphasis on sharing market intelligence and tracking and responding to market needs to their long-term orientation. Consequently, sales-people need to know why top management is urging them to be customer oriented. Since customer-oriented selling requires salespeople to satisfy customers in the long run, they need top management to be committed to developing long-term customer relationships (perceived top management long-term

orientation), and exhibit this commitment by emphasizing that satisfying customer needs (perceived top management emphasis) is the most important part of salespeople’s job.

Salespeople also attributed top management’s attitude toward risk to their long-term orientation. Specifically, salespeople believed that long-term-oriented top managers pursued innovative marketing strategies despite the risks of failure (perceived top management risk aversion). This should be a clear signal to salespeople that they are encouraged to take risks in implementing the marketing concept at the cus-tomer level. Although the relationship between perceived top management risk aversion and customer-oriented selling was nonsignificant, the significant negative relationship between perceived top management long-term orientation and per-ceived top management risk aversion suggests that salespeople associate top managers’ willingness to develop long-term cus-tomer relationships with their propensity to take risks, that is, salespeople believed that top managers are willing to take the risks of investing in long-term buyer–seller relationships. In turn, this should encourage salespeople to take a long-run view while interacting with customers despite the risks of short-term sacrifices in sales. This mind-set is necessary for salespeople to practice customer-oriented selling.

Taken together, perceived top management long-term ori-entation’s positive and negative relationships with perceived

Table 4Discriminant Validity

TMLTO TME TMRA COS

Top Management Long-Term Orientation (TMLTO) 0.71Top Management Emphasis (TME) 0.34 0.43Top Management Risk Aversion (TMRA) 0.15 0.20 0.39Customer-Oriented Selling (COS) 0.13 0.07 0.02 0.68

Note: Values in boldface on the diagonal show the average variances extracted; values below the diagonal represent the squared correlations.

Table 5Hypotheses Tests

Hypothesis Path

Standardized Parameter (t-Value) Result

H1 Top management emphasis → Customer-oriented selling 0.35 (3.17)

Supported

H2 Top management risk aversion → Customer-oriented selling –0.05 (–0.48)

Not supported

H3 Top management long-term orientation → Top management emphasis 0.81 (5.62)

Supported

H4 Top management long-term orientation → Top management risk aversion –0.59 (–5.57)

Supported

χ2 = 108.04, df = 61, p < 0.01, SRMR = 0.06, RMSEA = 0.06, GFI = 0.93, CFI = 0.98.

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top management emphasis and perceived top management risk aversion, respectively, indicate that successful implementation of customer-oriented selling requires an alignment between corporate strategy and salesperson strategy. Since misalign-ments between corporate and salespeople’s viewpoints may have negative implications (Anisimova and Mavondo 2010), the perceptions of salespeople should be routinely tracked to successfully implement customer-oriented selling. While top managers may emphasize the importance of customer-oriented selling, salespeople need to perceive that top man-agement is committed to the long-term success of the firm, and they are willing to assume the risks of such a long-term commitment.

Although the correlation between perceived top manage-ment risk aversion and customer-oriented selling was sig-nificantly negative (see Table 3), the path between perceived top management risk aversion and customer-oriented selling was nonsignificant in the structural model (see Table 5). A potential explanation for this finding could be that customer-oriented selling involves several activities that are not con-strued by salespeople as risky. For example, salespeople are likely to identify customer needs and stress the benefits of their offering as part of their normal sales call, regardless of their perceived top management risk aversion. In the process, salespeople will collect information from the selling situation and determine their optimal selling strategies based on this information. However, the manner in which they satisfy the identified needs will be a function of perceived top manage-ment risk aversion. Specifically, are salespeople willing to put high pressure on customers to increase the probability of an immediate sale regardless of the extent to which their offering satisfies customer needs? The SOCO scale (Saxe and Weitz 1982) may not adequately capture the motives of salespeople. As Schwepker argued, the “SOCO scale assesses the extent to which salespeople practice certain actions or behaviors (primarily sales presentation behaviors), not how well they practice them” (2003, p. 166). Jaworski and Kohli (1993) reported that top management risk aversion was negatively related to organizational responsiveness, but unrelated to intel-ligence generation and dissemination. Since salespeople are not directly responsible for organizational responsiveness, the relationship between perceived top management risk aversion and customer-oriented selling may have lacked significance.

ManageRial iMpliCaTions

The results of this study indicate that salespeople’s perceptions of top management long-term orientation may stimulate customer-oriented selling through perceived top management emphasis and perceived top management risk aversion. Con-sequently, in selling organizations, top management needs to demonstrate the degree to which they are long-term oriented.

Top management can accomplish this objective by engaging in servant leadership, and by implementing policies that create an image of being long-term oriented.

In servant leadership, “serving the needs of the follower becomes a leader’s priority and an end in itself rather than a means to achieve organizational objectives” (Jaramillo et al. 2009, p. 260). As servant leaders, top managers are expected to serve the needs of subordinates (sales managers), who in turn will serve the needs of salespeople. A long-term orienta-tion is inherent in servant leadership since servant leaders “set the following priorities in their leadership focus: followers first, organizations second, their own needs last” (Sendjaya, Sarros, and Sanatoria 2008, p. 403). According to Hannay, “one defining characteristic of the servant-leader is his or her desire to develop the employee in such a way as to maximize his or her long-term potential” (2009, p. 8). Servant leadership also influences organizational climate to promote organiza-tional citizenship behaviors among employees (Walumbwa, Hartnell, and Oke 2010). If salespeople genuinely believe that top managers and supervisors are unselfishly looking out for them, they will emulate this attitude in their interactions with customers by being customer oriented. Jaramillo et al. (2009) found empirical support for a positive relationship between supervisory servant leadership and customer-oriented selling.

With regard to organizational policies, top managers should ensure that salespeople perceive that there is a continuous communication of commitment to customer-oriented sell-ing between top managers and mid-level managers, such as supervisors. Kennedy, Goolsby, and Arnould referred to this as the “leadership proximity effect,” where successful imple-mentation of customer-oriented selling requires an unbroken “circuit of buy-in between workers and senior leaders” (2003, p. 71). Top management should also be careful in assigning and communicating sales quotas to sales managers since perceived quota difficulty may discourage customer-oriented selling (Schwepker and Good 2004). Care should also be exercised in designing sales contests because the frequency and format of these contests may negatively affect customer-oriented selling (Poujol and Tanner 2010).

Since highly customer-oriented salespeople engage in consultative selling, top management can also project an image of being long-term oriented by implementing con-sulting-oriented sales management programs (Pelham 2002). Consulting-oriented sales management programs involve “sales training, evaluation, and compensation programs structured to foster effective customer problem diagnosis and problem solving activities” (Pelham 2002, p. 97). Salespeople are likely to perceive top managers as long-term oriented if their train-ing includes skills such as questioning, listening, problem diagnosis, and solution in addition to the traditional topics such as product knowledge and selling skills. Top managers

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should also implement postsales training, consulting-oriented behavioral evaluation, and consulting-oriented compensation plans (Pelham 2002).

liMiTaTions anD fuTuRe ReseaRCh

The purpose of the study required data collection exclusively from the salespersons’ point of view. However, because all the variables were measured by self-reports, there is a potential for common method bias. As recommended by Podsakoff et al. 2003), the fit statistics of the four-factor measurement model was compared to a one-factor, a two-factor, and a three-factor model. The goodness-of-fit indexes indicated that these models fit poorly compared to the hypothesized four-factor model, meaning that a single factor cannot account for all the variances in the data. Consequently, common method variance was unlikely to bias the results. However, because of the cross-sectional design of the study and the low response rate, caution should be exercised in interpreting the results and generalizing the findings to other sales contexts.

Future research should address several research questions. First, what are the behavioral consequences of perceptual dif-ferences in top management long-term orientation? That is, how does the differences between perceived top management long-term orientation and actual top management long-term orientation affect customer-oriented selling? Researchers need to measure the long-term orientation of top managers and sales-people’s perceptions of them. As Ward et al. concluded, “actual differences in values have far fewer negative repercussions than people’s perceptions of those differences” (2007, p. 89).

Another extension of this study is the identification of potential moderators of the relationships among top man-agement factors and customer-oriented selling. For example, perceived supervisory orientations (Kohli, Shervani, and Challagalla 1998) may moderate the relationship between perceived top management emphasis and customer-oriented selling. The positive effect of perceived top management emphasis on customer-oriented selling may be stronger for capability-oriented supervisors compared to end-results-oriented and activity-oriented supervisors because capability-oriented supervisors “focus on the development of salespeople’s skills that enhance the quality of their behaviors” (Kohli, Shervani, and Challagalla 1998, p. 264).

Future research should also develop better measures of top management emphasis and top management risk aversion. The coefficient alpha values of these measures were less than 0.70 (see Table 3) and confirmatory factor analyses revealed that the path estimates of some of the items measuring these constructs were low (see Table 2). Developing better measures will rule out the possibility that measurement error might have contributed to the lack of support for H2.

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appenDix

perceived Top Management emphasis

Top managers repeatedly tell employees that this business unit’s survival depends on its adapting to market trends.Top managers often tell employees to be sensitive to the activities of our competitors.Top managers keep telling people around here that they must gear up now to meet customers’ future needs.According to top managers here, serving customers is the most important thing our business unit does.

perceived Top Management Risk aversion

Top managers in this business unit believe that higher financial risks are worth taking for higher rewards.Top managers here accept occasional new product failures as being normal.Top managers in this business unit like to take big financial risks.Top managers here encourage the development of innovative marketing strategies, knowing well that some will fail.Top managers in this business unit like to “play it safe.”Top managers around here like to implement plans only if they are very certain that they will work.

perceived Top Management long-Term orientation

Top management believes that over the long run, relationships with customers will be profitable.Maintaining a long-term relationship with customers is important to top management.Top management focuses on long-term goals in relationships with customers.Top management is willing to make sacrifices to help customers from time to time.Top management shares long-term goals with customers.Top management would like to develop long-term relationships with customers.

Customer orientation

I offer the product of mine that is best suited to the customer’s problem.I try to get customers to discuss their needs with me.I try to figure out what a customer’s needs are.I try to influence a customer by information rather than by pressure.I answer a customer’s questions about products as correctly as I can.A good salesperson has to have the customer’s best interest in mind.I try to achieve my goals by satisfying customers.I try to find out what kind of product would be most helpful to a customer.I am willing to disagree with a customer in order to help him/her make a better decision.I try to give customers an accurate expectation of what the product will do for them.I try to help customers achieve their goals.I try to bring a customer with a problem together with a product that helps him/her solve that problem.