Measuring peer effects in sales research: a review of challenges and remedies

Abstract

Peers are important sources of influence in the workplace. In addition to a voluminous literature in management, economics, and education on peer effects, a number of sales researchers have documented the effect of peers on salespeople’s attitudes, behaviors, and performance using different research designs, from surveys to observational studies. Despite the importance of peers, some scholars have raised issues with the way peer effects are measured, indicating that some of the documented effects might be spurious or artifacts of the underlying statistical models. In this article, the authors first review the current literature on peer effects in sales. Then, drawing on current critiques on the measurement of peer effects, they classify different measurement challenges that researchers face in identifying these effects. Finally, the authors build on different solutions that some researchers have applied to circumvent these issues to provide a list of potential remedies for both observational and survey research designs.

Keywords:

• peer effects
• reflection
• exclusion bias
• sales research
• survey research
• observational studies

Acknowledgments

The authors are indebted to Mike Ahearne for his invaluable suggestions.