Salespeople's renqing orientation, self-esteem, and selling behaviors: An empirical study in Taiwan

• Main Authors: TSAI, Ming-Hong, CHI, Shu-Cheng Steve, HU, Hsia-Hua
• Format: text
• Language: English
• Published: Institutional Knowledge at Singapore Management University 2009
• Subjects: Self-esteem; Renqing orientation; Selling behavior; Taiwan; Applied Behavior Analysis; Asian Studies; Psychology; Sales and Merchandising
• Online Access: https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/soss_research/2019; https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/context/soss_research/article/3276/viewcontent/9716939.pdf
• Institution: Singapore Management University

The purpose of this study was to investigate how salespeople's renqing orientation and self-esteem jointly affect their selling behavior. Data were obtained from a survey of salespeople from 17 pharmaceutical and consumer-goods companies in Taiwan (n = 216).Salespeople's renqing orientation (i.e., their propensity to adhere to the accepted norm of reciprocity) compensates the negative effect of self-esteem on their selling behaviors, such as adaptive selling and hard work. Our study results underscore the critical role of the character trait of renqing orientation in a culture emphasizing a norm of reciprocity. Therefore, it would be useful to consider a strategy of recruiting salespeople with either a high self-esteem or a combination of high renqing orientation and low self-esteem. The existing literature of industrial/ organizational psychology and marketing primarily relies on constructs that are derived from Western cultural contexts. However, the present paper extended these literatures by investigating the possible joint effects of self-esteem with a trait originated from the Chinese culture on salespeople's selling behaviors.