Perceived Impact of Promotional Support: Issues and Scale

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to come up with a scale for a new construct, perceived impact of promotional support (PIPS) and link it with sales performance through the mediators, sales effort and salesmanship skills. This paper involved three studies. In study 1, the authors came up with a new scale and in study 2 they tested it on a student sample. In study 3, they tested the scale on a sample of pharma salespersons (n = 202) and also tested the conceptual model. The paper employed standard scale development procedures, tested the model with SEM and showed that the new scale was reliable and valid. Further, PIPS was found to impact sales performance through salesmanship skills. While PIPS impacted sales effort, the latter surprisingly did not affect sales performance. For the practitioner, our work suggests that promotional support is critical, not just for motivating salespersons to put in more effort, but also to enhance their salesmanship skills, which in turn improves their performance. Moreover, it demonstrates the positive effect of sales effort on salesmanship skills.