Abstract
This study sets out to assess the effects of sales-related capabilities of personal selling organizations on individual sales capabilities, sales behaviors, and sales performance in cosmetics personal selling channels. Data are collected from 151 salespeople, their sales organizations, and their visiting customers (151) in South Korea. The proposed hypotheses are tested through the structural equation modelling technique. The study finds that both types of sales-related capabilities (salesforce management capabilities and personal selling capabilities) have significant positive effects on the individual sales capabilities, respectively. Further, the individual sales capability of salespeople has a stronger impact on customer-oriented sales behavior than on selling-oriented sales behavior. Similarly, selling-oriented sales behavior has a negative effect on customer satisfaction while customer-oriented sales behavior has a positive effect. The study further finds that customer-oriented sales behavior has a positive effect, while selling-oriented sales behavior has no statistically significant effect on sales performance. The relationship length, the study finds, moderates the relationship between customer-oriented sales behavior and customer satisfaction. The study offers practical and theoretical insights into understanding the nuances of sales-related capabilities of sales organizations and how they affect the individual selling capabilities of salespeople, their selling behaviors and sales performance. The results also have crucial consequences for sales organizations, as they can help sales managers design strategies and develop a culture that focuses on building and enhancing the selling capabilities of the firm and the salesforce. The present study demonstrates how the selling capabilities of the personal selling organization can influence the individual selling capabilities of the salesperson and how these could engender positive selling behaviors and sales performance.
Highlights
The cosmetics industry is a technology-intensive, multi-purpose, small-volume production system with a high participation of small and medium-sized enterprises and a market where sales and brand management are extremely crucial [1,2]
Cosmetics are suitable for small-scale production of different types due to short product replacement cycles and diverse consumer groups, and it is easy to enter the market with small capital without manufacturing facilities when using the outsourcing production such as ODM
It involves determining how many total salespeople should be acquired or whether to have full-line salespeople or salespeople who sell specific products [20]. When these salesforces are organized in the right size, salespeople will operate in regions with a balanced and acceptable workload and market potential [21] and will be able to do their jobs with sufficient time to regularly contact customers and discuss issues that need to be resolved [22]
Summary
The cosmetics industry is a technology-intensive, multi-purpose, small-volume production system with a high participation of small and medium-sized enterprises and a market where sales and brand management are extremely crucial [1,2]. Cosmetics are suitable for small-scale production of different types due to short product replacement cycles and diverse consumer groups, and it is easy to enter the market with small capital without manufacturing facilities when using the outsourcing production such as ODM (original design manufacturer) In this sense, the cosmetics industry can be seen as an industry with high participation of small and Sustainability 2021, 13, 3937. Research that examines how the organizational capabilities of sales organizations influence the personal capabilities of salespeople and how this further engenders sales behaviors and performance in the context of door-to-door selling is virtually non-existent, which further accentuates the need for fresh research aimed at filling these gaps. This differentiated approach to data collection and analysis is the methodological point of departure of this study
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