The Impact of Sales Failure on Attributions Made by "Resource-Challenged" and "Resource-Secure" Salespeople

Abstract

The present study investigates if the types of attributions salespeople use to account for a sales failure (internal or external) depend on the impact the failure has on their net resource inventory. The relative sizes of net resource inventories (resources left following a sales failure) were used to classify salespeople as either "resource challenged" or "resource secure." Results indicated that how salespeople were classified as well as the loss of a specific resource at different career stages determine, in part, the attribution type that salespeople assign for their sales failures. Revisions to an expectancy-causal model are suggested and application to other sales areas where managing or comanaging resource inventories is discussed.