http://repub.eur.nl/res/aut/10389/ List of Publications en http://repub.eur.nl/static-eur/img/logo.png http://repub.eur.nl http://repub.eur.nl/res/pub/26661/ 2012-09-01T00:00:00Z We explore genetic and neurological bases for customer orientation (CO) and contrast them with sales orientation (SO). Study 1 is a field study that establishes that CO, but not SO, leads to greater opportunity recognition. Study 2 examines genetic bases for CO and finds that salespeople with CO are more likely to have the 7R variant of the DRD4 gene. This is consistent with basic research on dopamine receptor activity in the brain that underlies novelty seeking, the reward function, and risk taking. Study 3 examines the neural basis of CO and finds that salespeople with CO, but not SO, experience greater activation of their mirror neuron systems and neural processes associated with empathy. Managerial and research implications are discussed. http://repub.eur.nl/res/pub/31480/ 2011-07-15T00:00:00Z Several studies indicate that the cerebellum might play a role in experiencing and/or controlling emphatic emotions, but it remains to be determined whether there is a distinction between positive and negative emotions, and, if so, which specific parts of the cerebellum are involved in these types of emotions. Here, we visualized activations of the cerebellum and extracerebellar regions using high-field fMRI, while we asked participants to observe and imitate images with pictures of human faces expressing different emotional states or with moving geometric shapes as control. The state of the emotions could be positive (happiness and surprise), negative (anger and disgust), or neutral. The positive emotional faces only evoked mild activations of crus 2 in the cerebellum, whereas the negative emotional faces evoked prominent activations in lobules VI and VIIa in its hemispheres and lobules VIII and IX in the vermis. The cerebellar activations associated with negative emotions occurred concomitantly with activations of mirror neuron domains such as the insula and amygdala. These data suggest that the potential role of the cerebellum in control of emotions may be particularly relevant for goal-directed behavior that is required for observing and reacting to another person's (negative) expressions. http://repub.eur.nl/res/pub/30562/ 2011-07-01T00:00:00Z This study explores how account managers-employees who operate as entrepreneurial customer boundary spanners-obtain intrafirm knowledge (organizational and expertise knowledge) from diverse colleagues so as to develop tailor-made solutions for their customers. Access to intrafirm knowledge is obtained through two independent knowledge-based exchanges within internal knowledge markets: account managers invest in different activities in order to signal communal and deal-maker reputations. In exchange, colleagues share organizational and expertise knowledge that ultimately contribute to account managers' performance. The types of knowledge shared by colleagues depend on the reputations of account managers. http://repub.eur.nl/res/pub/21986/ 2010-11-01T00:00:00Z Emotional wisdom is defined as a set of seven dimensions of basic skills and meta-narratives concerning how to regulate emotions within specific domains in such a way that the individual's and firm's well-being are tied together. Using operationalizations of emotional wisdom for salespersons from a wide range of industries (Study 1) and in automotive dealerships (Study 2), with respect to both colleagues and customers, it is discovered that salespeople who score high on emotional wisdom cope differently with socially challenging situations and achieve better social relationships than those who score low on emotional wisdom. http://repub.eur.nl/res/pub/20302/ 2009-10-01T00:00:00Z The goal of this article is to develop a new theory-driven scale for measuring salespeople's interpersonal-mentalizing skills—that is, a salesperson's ability to “read the minds” of customers in the sense of first recognizing customer intentionality and processing subtle interpersonal cues and then adjusting volitions accordingly. Drawing from research on autism and neuroscience, the authors develop a model of brain functioning that differentiates better-skilled from less-skilled interpersonal mentalizers. They establish the convergent, discriminant, concurrent, predictive, and nomological validities of measures of the scale using four methods in four separate studies: confirmatory factor analysis, structural equation models, multitrait–multimethod matrix procedures, and functional magnetic resonance imaging. The study is one of the first to test the validity of measures of a scale not only in traditional ways but also by adopting procedures from neuroscience. http://repub.eur.nl/res/pub/12693/ 2006-07-01T00:00:00Z The authors study how salespeople cope with social anxiety during customer contacts and find that two tactics, sale perseverance and task concentration, ultimately reduce dysfunctional protective actions. Both coping tactics, however, are differentially moderated by strength of felt physiological sensations and strength of negative expectations and thoughts. Salespeople experiencing anxiety cognitions should distract themselves by concentrating on their task to free up their thinking in relation to the task at hand. Engaging in behaviors to modify the situation by persevering on the sale, on the other hand, occupies action space and should be the coping strategy of choice for those salespeople confronting physiological sensations in relation to felt anxiety. Hypotheses are tested on a sample of 171 salespersons. http://repub.eur.nl/res/pub/12692/ 2006-05-22T00:00:00Z Purpose – Seeks to better understand whether a retailer’s trust in a manufacturer is a key concept in their motivation to allocate resources to those manufacturers with whom they have a long-term relationship compared with economical motivations. Design/methodology/approach – A survey research method is used to study all customers from three large manufacturers in The Netherlands. These retailers had to answer questions about their trust in a manufacturer, the manufacturer’s investments in the relationship, and their marketing efforts. Questions were also asked about the allocation of their own scarce resources for the manufacturer, specifically their adoption of in-store marketing campaigns initiated by the manufacturer. Structural equation models and regression analyses were employed. http://repub.eur.nl/res/pub/12695/ 2004-09-01T00:00:00Z This study examines the adaptive consequences of pride in personal selling and its self-regulation with colleagues and customers. Study 1 investigates the effects of experiencing pride, where two benefits were found. First, pride increases salespersons’ performance-related motivations. Specifically, it promotes the use of adaptive selling strategies, greater effort, and self-efficacy. Second, pride positively affects organizational citizenship behaviors. Study 2 takes an emotion-process point of view and compares excessive pride (hubris) with positive pride. The results show that salespeople are capable of self-regulating the expression of these emotions differently toward colleagues and customers via anticipated feelings of fear, shame, and regret. Salespeople, in other words, are affected by their emotions, but they also are capable of controlling them to their advantage. http://repub.eur.nl/res/pub/1172/ 2004-01-20T00:00:00Z We study how salespeople cope with sales call anxiety and find that two tactics ultimately reduce dysfunctional protective actions in selling interactions. That is, situation modification and attentional deployment both moderate the effects of felt physiological sensations and anxiety on protective actions. http://repub.eur.nl/res/pub/1174/ 2004-01-20T00:00:00Z We define emotional competence as a person’s domain-specific working model about how one can appropriately manage one’s emotions within interpersonal situations. Emotional competence is conceived as the integration of seven seemingly unrelated proficiencies: perspective taking, strategic self-presentation of emotions, helping targets of communication accept one’s genuine emotional reactions, lack of guilt when using emotions strategically, fostering self-authenticity, developing an ironic perspective, and incorporating one’s moral code into the self-regulation of emotions. A cluster analysis of responses to measures of the seven proficiencies by 220 salespeople revealed four distinct groups of people. The groups were defined by emotional competence syndromes consisting of combinations of different levels of the seven proficiencies. One group, the highly emotional competent, scored high on all seven proficiencies, a second group scored low on all seven. Two other groups resulted wherein one group was dominated by feelings of guilt in the use of emotions strategically, and the second was characterized by the inability to accept ambiguous and contradictory situations by assuming an ironic perspective. In a test of predictive validity, the highly emotional competent group, but not the others, coped effectively with envy and pride, achieved high social capital, and performed well. http://repub.eur.nl/res/pub/1166/ 2004-01-19T00:00:00Z Account managers invest in two distinct, compensatory social ties to achieve social capital, namely peripheral knowledge ties and implementation support ties. The first ties require communal investments, which consist of organizational citizenship behaviors and peripheral information sharing. The second ties require instrumental investments that encompass reciprocity norms and strategic information sharing. Hypotheses are tested on a sample of 164 account managers who sell financial products/services to large customers. The findings show that account managers invest in both ties to attain peripheral knowledge accretion and implementation support which in turn result in improved performance. http://repub.eur.nl/res/pub/1167/ 2004-01-19T00:00:00Z Study 1 investigates the beneficial effects of experiencing pride. Pride was found to have two different effects. First, it increases salespersons’ performance-related motivations. Specifically, it promotes adaptive selling strategies, greater effort, and self-efficacy. Secondly, it positively affects organizational citizenship behaviors. Study 2 takes an emotion-process point of view and compares excessive pride (hubris) with positive pride. The results show that salespeople are capable of self-regulating the expression of these emotions via anticipated feelings of fear, shame, and regret. Salespeople in other words are affected by their emotions, but they also are capable of controlling them to their advantage. http://repub.eur.nl/res/pub/12697/ 2003-09-01T00:00:00Z We investigate the role that embarrassment, a self-conscious emotion, plays within a selling context. First, we consider what SC-emotions in general are and whether embarrassment might have positive as well as negative impacts on selling behavior. Next, we examine how embarrassment differs from sales call anxiety (SCA). The results show that embarrassment is manifest as an awkward, abashed chagrin provoked either by what a salesperson does that is inappropriate (self-provoked embarrassment) or what a customer does that is inappropriate or offensive to a salesperson (customer-provoked embarrassment). Self- and customer-provoked embarrassment each induce distinct coping responses and both diminish adaptive resource utilization during interactions with customers; this in turn promotes avoidance of future contact with the customer (especially for customer-provoked embarrassment). Implications of the research for practitioners are discussed. http://repub.eur.nl/res/pub/12698/ 2003-04-01T00:00:00Z In this study, the authors investigated how salespeople within an interdependent-based culture (the Philippines) and an independent-based culture (the Netherlands) experience and self-regulate shame. Filipino and Dutch employees were found to experience shame as a consequence of customer actions in largely similar ways (i.e., for both, shame is a painful self-conscious emotion with unique physiological/ behavioral urges, self-focused attention, and felt threat to the core self) but have different responses to their felt shame. Specifically, shame is self-regulated dissimilarly in the 2 cultures and leads to opposite effects on performance, namely, enhanced customer relationship building and civic virtue and helping occur for Filipino employees, and diminished sales volume, communication effectiveness, and relationship building transpire for Dutch employees. The positive effects experienced by Filipino employees occur through direct responses to felt shame and as a result of adaptive resource utilization. The negative effects experienced by Dutch employees occur as a result of the dysfunctional (from the firm's point of view) discharge of protective actions. http://repub.eur.nl/res/pub/12717/ 2002-09-01T00:00:00Z The goal of this article is to explore the role that shame and embarrassment play within an organization boundary-spanning context. For a sample of 458 salespeople selling financial services, measures are developed and hypotheses are tested concerning the effects of shame and embarrassment. The results suggest that the tendency to experience shame and embarrassment in personal selling leads to protective reactions (e.g., avoidance behaviors), and these, in turn, negatively impact performance (e.g., sales volume and quality of sales interaction). Hypotheses are tested on fitting and validation samples, both for salespeople focusing on prospecting tasks and salespeople focusing on relationship building. http://repub.eur.nl/res/pub/12707/ 2000-01-01T00:00:00Z The goal of this study is to develop and test a conceptualization of sales call anxiety (SCA) on the basis of current insights from the cognitive approach to social anxiety. Sales call anxiety is an irrepressible fear of being negatively evaluated and rejected by a customer, and it is coupled with a desire to avoid undertaking specific functional actions in selling situations. The authors present and test a model of SCA in two selling situations known to have threatening consequences for salespeople: canvasing and closing. The authors find that SCA consists of four components: negative self-evaluations, negative evaluations from customers, awareness of physiological symptoms (e.g., a queasy stomach, shaky voice, blushing), and protective actions (e.g., avoiding eye contact, fiddling with the hands, shunning self-disclosures). The authors show that these dimensions are functions of negative affectivity and anxiety-provoking contextual cues and that they negatively influenced the performance of 189 mortgage salespeople.