An Exploratory Study of Gender and Age Matching in the Salesperson-Prospective Customer Dyad: Testing Similarity-Performance Predictions

Sean Dwyer · Richard Orlando · C. David Shepherd

125 citations0/0 files storedJournal of Personal Selling and Sales Management

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Employee Performance and Motivation Customer Service Quality and Loyalty Social and Intergroup Psychology

Abstract

The increasingly diversified composition of the sales force poses one of the most challenging organizational issues of our time. Employing similarity-attraction theory and social identity theory, theoretical foundations are provided for: 1. investigating salesperson preferences for selling to similar; and 2. exploring the dynamic nature of these preferences as they relate to sales performance. The results of an insurance sales sample indicated that salespeople are primarily attracted to prospects who are similar to themselves in terms of age and gender. However, contrary to predictions, buyer-seller age similarity was found to have no impact on sales performance, while gender mismatch is the sales dyad was found to actually enhance performance.

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References

1994The Commitment-Trust Theory of Relationship Marketing 2004The Social Identity Theory of Intergroup Behavior 1986Psychology of intergroup relations 1990Relationship Quality in Services Selling: An Interpersonal Influence Perspective 1987THE PEOPLE MAKE THE PLACE 1972The attraction paradigm 1985Social Identity and Intergroup Relations.1977Some Effects of Proportions on Group Life: Skewed Sex Ratios and Responses to Token Women

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2018Financial Advice and Bank Profits 2001Toward a Theory of Business Buyer-Seller Similarity 2021Operationalizing salesperson performance with secondary data: aligning practice, scholarship, and theory 2010The business case for diversity and the perverse practice of matching employees to customers 2012The Effects of Facial Attractiveness and Gender on Customer Evaluations during a Web-Video Sales Encounter 2016Salespersons’ empathy as a missing link in the customer orientation–loyalty chain: an investigation of drivers and age differences as a contingency

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