An Examination of the Relationships between Retail Work Environments, Salesperson Selling Orientation-Customer Orientation and Job Performance

This research examines the relationship between three organizational level constructs and salesperson’s selling orientation-customer orientation (SOCO) in an in-store retail setting. Respondents represent a wide variety of retail firms. A firm’s customer orientation, centralization, and employee perceptions of support from individuals in the organization were significantly related to customer orientation, selling orientation, or both. Firm level customer orientation and perceptions of work environment support were positively related to a salesperson’s degree of customer orientation and negatively related to selling orientation. Centralization was positively related to selling orientation but not to customer orientation. Customer orientation was positively related to performance, while selling orientation was not related.

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