Salesperson time perspectives and customer willingness to pay more: roles of intraorganizational employee navigation, customer satisfaction, and firm innovation climate

Abstract

This research aims to fill a critical gap in the sales literature by proposing a relationship-based model of customer willingness to pay more, involving salesperson time perspectives (i.e., long-term perspective and short-term perspective), intraorganizational employee navigation, and customer satisfaction with the salesperson. We also examine the moderating role of firm innovation climate. Multisource survey data were collected from 204 salespeople in a business-to-business sales context along with external ratings from customers of these salespeople three months later. The findings indicate that both long- and short-term perspectives have positive effects on intraorganizational employee navigation and customer satisfaction, which, in turn, positively affect customer willingness to pay more. In addition, short-term perspective has a stronger impact than long-term perspective on intraorganizational employee navigation. Further, the effect of long-term perspective on customer satisfaction is strengthened by the innovation climate of the firm, whereas the effect of short-term perspective on customer satisfaction is weakened by it.

Keywords:

• sales performance
• time perspective
• customer satisfaction
• innovation climate
• employee navigation

Notes

1 Although it is beyond the scope of our study, we do want to highlight that, conceptually, salesperson’s time perspectives are different from their sales (customer) orientations. Time perspective is all about the interdependence between temporally close and temporally remote consequences of actions (Kelley and Thibaut 1978). It does not have any social or empathetic angle. For salespeople who have a dominant long-term perspective, “their short-term actions represent the means by which long-term goals are set in motion” (Beuk et al. 2014). On the other hand, high sales orientation represents high level of concern for self, and customer orientation reflects a high level of concern for others (please refer to Goad and Jaramillo 2014 for more details). Harris, Mowen, and Brown (2005) define selling orientation as “a focus on activities that may result in sales in the short term at the expense of customer satisfaction (Saxe and Weitz 1982)” (italics added to emphasize). So the motivational mechanism is based on the question of utility for the object in question, that is, who should I help - myself or customer. Both long- and short-time perspectives, however, have a high level of concern for customers (see the Model development section for more details).

2 Effect sizes of 0.02 are considered small, 0.15 are considered medium, and 0.35 are considered large.

3 We thank an anonymous reviewer for this insight.