Why the Shortened ADAPTS Scale Should Not Be Used for Sales Students: An Abstract

Abstract

Student samples are uncommon in professional sales research, but are useful for studying sales education. Because adaptive selling is a core concept of personal selling, it may be useful to measure the adaptive selling behaviors of sales students. However, in order to measure adaptive selling behaviors as a single construct, items contain a high level of abstraction that may be difficult for students to fully comprehend. One of the most commonly used measures of adaptive selling behaviors is the shortened RMML ADAPTs scale. That scale contains the phrase “selling approach” in four of the five items. Sales students could interpret “sales approach” as referring to a variety of sales behaviors such as influencing tactics, service/product offerings, communication channels, verbal communications, and nonverbal communications. If students lack a stable understanding of the “sales approach,” it may be difficult for them to accurately respond to items containing that concept. Due to the complexity of such estimation, students may rely on their self-rated performance. Students are typically asked about their adaptive selling behaviors based on specific class activities, role-plays, and/or sales simulations. It is likely that students find it easier to rate their performance than their adaptive behaviors because performance often has objective outcomes such as class grade, instructor feedback, and/or activity success. Students may then base their ratings of adaptive behaviors on their perceived self-rated performance. Adaptive selling behaviors items are worded positively so that if the salespeople have high performance it is logical that they must be engaged in positive behaviors. Hence, previous performance is likely to influence response to adaptive selling scales.