판매원의 지각된 고객 인게이지먼트가 적응판매행동에 미치는 영향 연구: 접근·회피성향의 조절효과를 중심으로

Abstract

Purpose: This study aims to confirm the effect of perceived customer engagement of department store salespersons on adaptive selling behavior. Based on the job demand-resource model, we want to verify whether perceived customer engagement plays a role as a salesperson’s job resource. In addition, it is intended to check whether approach orientation and avoid orientation, which are the goal-oriented characteristics of individual salesperson, have moderating effects between perceived customer engagement and work engagement. Research design, data, and methodology: To verify the hypotheses, a survey was conducted with department store sales representatives in South Korea. After conducting a pretest with 30 people, some ambiguous and awkward expressions were corrected. The survey was conducted for about two weeks from September 20, 2021, and 468 responses out of 480 distributed questionnaires were collected. SPSS22.0 and SmartPLS 3.3.3. were used for statistical processing, and after verifying the validity and reliability of the questionnaire items, hypothesis testing was conducted. Results: As a result, all the hypotheses were supported. First, the more the salesperson recognizes the customer’s positive engagement, the more the salesperson will interact with the customer to enhance their work engagement and ultimately create higher value with the customer. This indicates that salesperson who perceive customer’s engagement are inclined to be more faithful to their job, and the higher the likelihood of showing performance. Second, it was found that the salesperson’s approach orientation positively strengthens the relationship between perceived customer engagement and work engagement. This means that salespeople with a strong tendency to achieve personal goals increase their enthusiasm for their jobs by interacting positively with customer-level efforts such as customer engagement. Third, it was found that salespersons with passive and negative motivation for personal goal achievement reduce the effect of perceived customer engagement on work engagement. The avoidance tendency of salespeople, such as pre-checking and taking action on problematic areas to achieve organizational goals, reduces the positive effect of perceived job resources on work engagement. Fourth, it was found that when salespersons increase their engagement for their jobs, this in turn induces high motivation for work and has a positive effect on adaptive selling behaviors to achieve actual sales goals. Salespersons with enthusiasm for their job will show high sales performance by flexibly and actively responding to fluid sales situations, non-flexible sales conditions, and various customer needs. Fifth, it was found that salespeople who actively perform their duties will actively engage in stewardship for customers who are dedicated to their customers’ interests. This means that a salesperson with high work engagement will act as a steward to his/her duties and responsibilities towards customers and to help the welfare of customers. Sixth, salesperson who are tend to have customer-oriented stewardship would increase customer-oriented adaptive sales behavior. This means that the salesperson actively responds to the sales situation by serving the customer with a stewardship attitude and prioritizing the customer’s interests. Based on the above study results, the following implications are suggested. First, it was verified that the salesperson’s perceived customer engagement plays as an antecedent variable of work engagement. Unlike previous studies, this paper examines customer engagement from the perspective of a salesperson. Second, the empirical analysis targeting department store salespeople expanded the field of application and added depth to the study. In previous studies, empirical analysis was mainly conducted in the tourism industry, but it was extended to the distribution industry and focused on the salesperson rather than the customer. In particular, it is meaningful to empirically analyze the relationship between the salesperson’s approach/avoidance tendency and perceived customer engagement formed based on emotional factors in the salesperson-customer relationship. Conclusions: Summarizing the above results, the salesperson