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Salesperson Customer Orientation as an Antecedent to Customer Loyalty: An Exploratory Study

Customer-orientation of salespeople has a significant influence on sales performance, behavioural intentions of customers and their satisfaction levels. Yet, there have been studies which point towards the fact, that although the SOCO (Saxe & Weitz, 1982) scale has been used by a number of researchers as a measure of customer-orientation, its efficacy in measuring individual sales performance based on salesperson skills or traits is still incomplete (Singh, A. & Koshy, A., 2011, p. 70), reinforced by the fact that customer-orientation is more of an individual level construct being supported by organizational-orientation. Salespersons have a tremendous impact on loyalty exhibited by customers, to the extent that customers may cease to be loyal to a firm when a particular salesperson is transferred or leaves the firm (O'Leighlin, D & Szmigin, I., 2006, p. 285).This paper explores conceptual foundations surrounding salesperson customer-orientation, customer loyalty as its consequence and the role played by personality traits of individual salesperson in influencing these constructs by a thorough examination of literature. Additionally, it is also proposed that the relationship be studied from salesperson perspective as very few researchers have focussed on this side of the relationship, and shall also be helpful for firms to understand key salesperson motivations. Key personality indicators are identified as moderators of the relationship and a model is re - developed by adapting from other models of customer orientation and customer loyalty.