Testing indigenous cultural impact on replicability & generalizability of interpersonal listening in personal sales

ABSTRACT

The customer-salesperson dyad is strongly influenced by indigenous cultures regarding the context in which dyads occur and are understood to be meaningful. Prior research suggests that majority of established theories in sales and marketing communication reflect biases of western thought and are one-sidedly dominated by U.S. and European centric, individualistic, and efficiency-oriented approaches. The present study rethinks the concept of interpersonal listening in personal sales and its applicability from indigenous and comparative perspectives and asks the following questions: 1. Are the consequences of ILPS the same in countries where the culture is dramatically different? 2. Along with the relationship of ILPS with customer retention, is there any mediating effect of Interaction Satisfaction (IS) on Trust? A conceptual model, postulating linkages of a salesperson’s listening behaviour to customer’s IS, Trust, and Long-Term Commitment (LTC), was tested using partial least squares (PLS).

KEYWORDS:

• Interpersonal listening
• personal sales
• indigenous culture
• India
• Communication

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. NCR – National Capital Region.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Archana Shrivastava

Archana Shrivastava is an Associate Professor & Head- Business Communication Area. Worked at various universities and colleges, she holds 21 years of rich teaching, researching and training experience. Her current research and publications are in the area of Communication, Learning through virtual collaborations, the Role of media in knowledge creation, Use of technology in higher education, leadership, Team building, Skill development and Intercultural Communication. She has participated and presented papers in various conferences held in India and abroad. She has authored numerous case studies and research papers which got published in reputed journals listed in ABDC- A, B &C and publishing houses like IVEY, Emerald, and Case Centre (European Case Clearing House). She is a recipient of a travel grant awarded by AICTE in 2015 for presenting her research study at Columbia University in New York. She is the recipient of the best paper award in 2017 at the conference in Oxford university & in 2018 at the international conference at Teri University.