| Abstract: | - Consumers regularly interact with retail salespeople in order to make purchases across a wide range of products and services. Retail sales encounters occur on a daily basis yet we know little about these complex interactions, especially from the consumer's perspective in terms of his or her perceptions with regard to these types of persuasive attempts. Understanding consumer perceptions is an important precursor to understanding consumer behavior during retail sales encounters. In three experiments subjects' perceptions of specific influence strategies were measured with regard to the degree of sales‐orientation of each strategy. Support was found for hypotheses that proposed that certain influence strategies would be perceived as significantly more sales‐oriented than others and that the interaction of consumer goals with salesperson influence would affect how influence strategies are perceived. Willingness to interact with and purchase from a salesperson using specific influence strategies was also examined in order to shed light on how the use of specific influence strategies is likely to affect consumers' intentions.
Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. |
