Going beyond fit (misfit): Enhancing sales performance based on salespeople's self-construal

Abstract

Though self-construal has attracted researchers' attention in several areas, salesperson self-construal has not been well investigated. In this study, we explore the mediating mechanism and contingent factors that explain how and when salespersons' distinct kinds of self-construal affect their sales performance. Using data from different sources, we find that salespersons' self-construal interacts with various job and organizational features to influence their customer-oriented behaviors and resultant job performance. Furthermore, firms can not only increase (decrease) both interdependent and independent salespersons' customer-oriented behaviors by creating simple forms of person-environment fit (misfit), but also manipulate or change existing P-E fit or misfit with distinct sales controls. We emphasize the importance of these differential effects by empirically verifying that self-construal's impact on customer orientation consequently links to objective sales performance. Together, our findings have theoretical and practical implications for sales management in relation to salesperson self-construal.