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The Role of Affect in Personal Selling and Sales Management

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 THE ROLE OF AFFECT IN PERSONAL SELLING AND SALES MANAGEMENT
Sunil Erevelles and Nobuyuki Fukawa

The term “affect” is generally used to refer to a set of “internal feeling states,” and includes mood and emotion. This
paper provides an assessment of the current state of knowledge on affect and other related constructs as they relate to
personal selling and sales management. The authors review and reflect on the theoretical frameworks commonly used in
the study of affect in the sales literature. The managerial issues related with affect in sales contexts are also highlighted.
The authors conclude with an identification of critical gaps that exist in the sales literature and suggest several directions
for future research.

The role of affect in marketing has been the focus of consid-
erable attention over the past three decades. This growth has
been fueled by the realization that the study of traditional
cognitive processes, by itself, has been inadequate for fully
understanding many marketing phenomena. An area of mar-
keting with considerable potential for a more comprehensive
understanding of the influence of affect is personal selling
and sales management. Many, if not most, aspects of personal
selling and sales management inherently have an affective
element. Yet challenges in the observation, identification,
measurement, and classification of affective processes and
outcomes in sales contexts may have hindered expansion of
the body of research in the area. As a result, critical affective
processes in personal selling and sales management may not
have been studied sufficiently thus far.
This paper provides a general assessment of the current
state of knowledge of affect in the sales literature. Compared
with general marketing and consumer behavior contexts, the
study of the role of affect in sales contexts, while considerably
developed, is still relatively less pervasive in the literature.
In addition, the term “affect” and other related constructs
have often been used with different meanings across the sales
literature.
The term “affect” is generally used today to refer to an
“internal feeling state” (Cohen, Pham, and Andrade 2008,
p. 297). Emotion and mood are instances of this state. Emo-
tion is considered to be relatively shorter lasting and higher
in intensity than mood, whereas mood is relatively longer
Sunil Erevelles (Ph.D., The Ohio State University), Chair and
Associate Professor, Department of Marketing, University of North
Carolina at Charlotte, serevell@uncc.edu.
Nobuyuki Fukawa (Ph.D., Louisiana State University), Assistant
Professor, Department of Business and Information Technology,
Missouri University of Science and Technology, fukawan@mst
.edu.
lasting and lower in intensity (Bagozzi, Gopinath, and Nyer
1999; Cohen and Areni 1991; Cohen, Pham, and Andrade
2008, p. 299). Whereas emotion is an affective state gener-
ally associated with a particular object, mood is an affective
state generally independent of a particular object (Clore et
al. 2001, p.  30; Cohen and Areni 1991; Linnenbrink and
Pintrich 2004, p. 58). Attitude is distinguished from affect
in that attitude is an evaluative judgment, whereas affect is a
feeling state (Cohen and Areni 1991).
Compared to the variations in terminology from the past
(see Peterson, Hoyer, and Wilson 1986), there is a better
consensus today on how affect and other related constructs
are generally defined. Nevertheless, some variations exist in
the literature. Clore et al. (2001, p. 29), for example, suggest
that the term “affective” refers to “representations of value” and
includes not only emotions and moods but also preferences
and attitudes. Similarly, Bagozzi, Gopinath, and Nyer’s (1999)
definition is relatively broad in the sense that they suggest that
the term “affect” includes not only emotions and moods but
possibly also attitudes.
The focus of this paper is on the current state of the theory
and knowledge of affect and other related constructs as it
pertains to personal selling and sales management. In addi-
tion, a key objective in this paper is the identification of some
critical gaps in the sales literature and the proposal of future
research directions, where insight on affective processes could
aid substantially in the understanding of sales functions and
outcomes. In order to place limits on what could otherwise
be a large and unwieldy discussion, we discuss only key issues
in the area of affect and sales. The goal is to provide a broad
assessment of the role of affect in personal selling and sales
management and to suggest critical directions for future
The authors thank Kriti Bordia and Clayton Jennings for their con-
tributions in the preparation of this paper. Both authors contributed
equally to the paper.

Journal of Personal Selling & Sales Management, vol. XXXIII, no. 1 (winter 2013), pp. 7–24.
© 2013 PSE National Educational Foundation. All rights reserved. Permissions: www.copyright.com
ISSN 0885–3134 (print) / ISSN 1557–7813 (online)
DOI: 10.2753/PSS0885-3134330102
8  Journal of Personal Selling & Sales Management
research. In addition, because of the range of literature covered,
it is beyond the scope of this paper to provide an in-depth
analysis of every research issue related to affect in the sales
domain. We now start with an overview of the theoretical
frameworks commonly related to the study of affect in sales
contexts.
Common Theoretical Frameworks in
Affect-Related Sales Research
Attribution Theory
Early theories used in the sales literature, such as Weiner’s
(1985) “attribution theory,” incorporate emotion as part of
the motivational process. According to attribution theory,
the motivational process starts with a perceived outcome of a
certain event. A positive outcome is usually accompanied by
positive emotion and a negative outcome is usually accompa-
nied by negative emotion. It is suggested that an individual
starts to search for the cause of the positive or negative
outcomes. According to the theory, seven distinct emotions
(anger, gratitude, guilt, hopelessness, pity, pride, and shame)
can potentially be generated through this causal-search process.
For instance, when a salesperson thinks that he or she failed
to achieve a sales target due to a lack of his or her ability (i.e.,
internal causes), that individual may feel lower motivation and
self-esteem. But if the salesperson thinks that the failure is due
to external causes, such as a bad economy, his or her motivation
and self-esteem may not be affected. It is suggested that the
attribution process for internal causes is relatively automatic,
while the attribution process for external causes is often con-
sciously controlled (Gilbert 1989; Roeckelein 1998).
The Mental Ability Framework
How an individual manages his or her own emotions and rec-
ognizes the emotions of others based on his or her personality/
skill perspective (emotional intelligence) has attracted the
attention of several researchers. Mayer, Salovey, and Caruso
(2000) examine emotional intelligence from three perspec-
tives: cultural trend, personality, and mental ability, and
particularly emphasize the importance of the mental ability
aspect in emotional intelligence. In more recent sales literature,
Kidwell, McFarland, and Avila (2007) call this perspective,
based on emotional ability, the “mental ability framework.”
According to the Mayer, Salovey, and Caruso model, emotional
intelligence has four dimensions: (1) emotional perception,
(2) emotional integration, (3) emotional understanding, and
(4) emotional management. In a sales context, for instance,
a sales person (1) has to pay attention to and become aware
of a customer’s emotions (e.g., anger) from a certain signal
(e.g., a facial expression). Then, (2) this customer’s perceived
emotions enters into the cognitive system of the salesperson
and has an impact on his or her own cognition. Next, (3) the
salesperson attempts to understand the implication of the
customer’s emotions (e.g., why is the customer angry?). Finally,
(4) the salesperson attempts to manage his or her emotions as
well as the customer’s emotion.
Anxiety Models
Some theories explain how a negative emotion, such as anxiety
in salespeople, often leads to poor communication with cus-
tomers and poor overall performance in salespeople. Verbeke
and Bagozzi review cognitive theories of social anxiety in
explaining a salesperson’s anxiety, identifying these frameworks
as “attention-based cognitive anxiety models” (2000, p. 89),
as based on the work of Clark and Wells (1995). Clark and
Wells’s framework describes a social situation in which people
feel that they may behave in an unacceptable way, and the
consequence of such failure may be so severe that they may
lose their status in that social situation. According to this
theory, when entering into such a social situation, a person
automatically starts to feel some anxiety. Clark and Wells
go on to propose the concept of “social phobia,” in which a
person has a strong hope to form a positive impression about
him- or herself, despite his or her lack of confidence in his or
her ability to do so. A person with social phobia tends to turn
his or her attention inward toward him- or herself (e.g., how
the individual feels), rather than toward the external environ-
ment (e.g., how other people feel). This narrow attention
focus results in an inability to assess the current situation and
the behavior of others. Thus, the individual may miss social
cues and be unable to communicate well with others, which
in turn is further recognized as evidence of a social threat.
In a sales context, a salesperson with anxiety has self-focused
attention and is unable to assess the selling situation and a
customer’s behavior adequately. Thus, the salesperson is unable
to communicate well with customers, often leading to poor
sales outcomes.
Social Learning Theory
Salespeople form impressions and cognitive representations of
organizations on the basis of their personal experiences (e.g.,
interactions with their managers, colleagues, or customers)
within the organizations (Martin and Bush 2006). These
perceptions and cognitive representations of organizations
are sometimes referred to as the “psychological climate” of the
organization (e.g., James et al. 1978), and have been studied
often in the sales literature. Because affect plays an impor-
tant role in the formation of such impressions and cognitive
representations of an organization, researchers often include
affective variables when studying psychological climate (James

et al. 1978), and often rely on cognitive social learning theory.
James et al. (1978) describe psychological climate as “cognitive
representations” that may reflect different interpretations of an
environment for an individual. Based on their interpretation
of cognitive social learning theory, James et al. (1978) suggest
that this cognitive process includes perception, learning, and
memory, and that each of these are closely related.
Although cognitive social learning theory accommodates
individual differences in the formation of cognitive represen-
tations of an organization, some researchers of psychological
climate focus their attention on the perceptions commonly
held by a majority of an organization’s members, leaving
individual differences out. These commonly held perceptions
are sometimes called “organizational climate,” instead of “psy-
chological climate” (Campbell et al. 1970; James et al. 1978).
Campbell et al. (1970) describe organizational climate as a
series of characteristics that distinguish an organization from
other organizations and that are relatively long lasting over
time. Consistent with this notion, Martin and Bush (2006)
describe psychological climate, in a context of sales manager–
salesperson relationships, as a perceptual phenomenon widely
shared by members of an organization.
The Broaden-and-Build Theory of Positive Emotions
Fredrickson (2001) suggests that whereas negative emotions
(e.g., fear) are often linked to specific actions (e.g., helping
an individual escape from danger) and thus enjoy short-term
adaptive benefits, positive emotions result in various behavioral
tendencies that may help build various personal resources and
lead to longer-term adaptive benefits. Thus, she argues that the
concept of “specific action tendencies,” the core component
of many theories of emotion (Fredrickson 2003), primarily
explain negative emotions, but often not positive emotions.
Calling for a theory that specifically explains the unique roles
of positive emotion, Fredrickson (2001) proposes the broaden-
and-build theory of positive emotions.
According to the broaden-and-build theory, each discrete
positive emotion (e.g., joy, pride, love) is associated with a
larger list of alternative thoughts and actions that become avail-
able in a given situation through a broadened mind. Thus, for
instance, joy may broaden one’s mind by stimulating a desire
to interact with friends, and also by allowing an individual
to come up with more innovative ideas. The theory also sug-
gests that this broadened mind-set may help individuals build
various personal resources for the long term. These personal
resources could include intellectual resources (e.g., problem-
solving skills), physical resources (e.g., physical strength), social
resources (e.g., building relationships with new friends), and
psychological resources (e.g., developing optimism). These
broaden-and-build components of positive emotions may be
applicable in various sales contexts. For instance, a salesperson
Winter 2013  9
full of joy may have a tendency to approach more customers
as a result of his or her broadened mind, thus building bet-
ter relationships with more customers (i.e., building social
resources) and learning how to serve customers better (i.e.,
building intellectual resources).
The Dual-Process Theory of Emotion
Baumeister et al. (2007) propose a dual-process theory of
emotion that considers two types of emotions (i.e., automatic
emotion and conscious emotion). They believe that the theory
is useful in resolving some long-lasting debates on competing
theories without making them contradict each other. These
competing viewpoints center on whether affect and cognition
are two independent systems or are closely related to each other.
In the dual-process theory, automatic affective responses are
almost free of cognitive processes and are differentiated by
valence, whereas conscious affective responses are relatively
complex processes that accompany arousal and are closely
related with cognitive processes. In a sales context, automatic
affective responses may include, for instance, a customer’s
immediate positive or negative emotions toward a store or sales-
person. Conscious affective responses, however, may involve
the negative affective state of a salesperson that derives from a
stressful working environment or a difficult buyer.
Appraisal Theory
The discussion of automatic versus cognitive-affective pro-
cesses can be also found in appraisal theory. In appraisal theory,
emotion is considered an outcome of an appraisal process.
The appraisal process includes at least two subprocesses.
During the first subprocess, a person examines whether he or
she is benefited or hurt by a particular situation; during the
second subprocess, the person appraises what can be done
about it (Lazarus and Folkman 1984, p. 31). Whereas Arnold
(1960, 1970) argues that appraisal processes are immediate
and automatic, Lazarus and Folkman (1984, p. 26) contend
that appraisal processes go far beyond such rapid, automatic
processes.
Lazarus’s (1991b) cognitive-motivational-relational theory
accommodates the argument by proposing two different
outcomes of appraisal: short-term and long-term affective
responses. Short-term affective responses include relatively
automatic and immediate emotional responses, including
physiological changes. For example, a salesperson gets upset
and his or her face turns red after a rude remark by a customer.
Long-term affective responses include continual emotional
patterns, including social functioning and health issues. It is
suggested that these affective outcomes are affected by environ-
mental conditions surrounding individuals and an individual’s
characteristics through the appraisal process.
10  Journal of Personal Selling & Sales Management
The Mood-as-Information Model
Whereas appraisal theory views emotion as an outcome of an
appraisal process, the mood-as-information model (Schwarz
1990) explains how an individual uses his or her affective state
to evaluate an object or individual. According to the model
(Schwarz 1990), an individual’s mood is used as a source of
information in evaluating the object, with the individual ask-
ing him- or herself how he or she “feels about the object.” It
is assumed that one’s positive affective state is associated with
a safe environment, whereas a negative affective state is asso-
ciated with a problematic environment. Thus, an individual
(e.g., a customer at a store) attributes his or her feelings to be
a response toward a certain object (e.g., a store environment)
or another individual (e.g., a salesperson). An individual in
a positive affective state may form a more favorable response
toward an object or an individual compared with an individual
in a negative mood. This attribution can happen beyond one’s
consciousness (Schwarz and Clore 2003) as an automatic affec-
tive process. However, when an individual consciously realizes
that his or her current affective state is irrelevant to a given
object, the individual will likely not use his or her affective
state to evaluate the object (Schwarz and Clore 2003). For
instance, when a customer at a store is aware that an event that
took place prior to coming to the store has induced a current
negative mood, the customer may realize that the negative
mood is not attributable to a salesperson in the store. In this
case, the negative mood would not influence the evaluation
of the salesperson or the store.
Brief Overview of the Current
State of the Literature
In this section, we provide a brief overview of the current
state of the literature on affect in personal selling and sales
management. The categories in this section are chosen for
better understanding and organization, and are not mutually
exclusive by any means. See Table 1 for a summary of the major
categories and representative studies in each category.
Positive Affect in Personal Selling and Sales Management
Positive affect has long been known to influence the work-
related attitudes of salespeople. One of the more frequently
studied issues, for example, is its role in the relationship
between sales performance and job satisfaction. Early studies,
involving cognitive models, suggest that sales performance may
be causally related with job satisfaction (e.g., Bagozzi 1980;
Walker, Churchill, and Ford 1977). Later empirical evidence
seems to indicate, however, that such a causal relationship
is weak or nonexistent (Brown and Peterson 1993). Brown,
Cron, and Leigh (1993) suggest that “feelings of success” may
mediate the relationship between sales performance and work-
related attitudes such as job satisfaction and job involvement.
These “feelings of success” result when a person’s appraisal of
his or her work performance leads to an affective response
(Hall 1971, 1976). Similarly, George (1998) finds that the
positive mood of salespeople may facilitate helping behaviors
toward customers. Thus, she suggests that it is important for
sales managers to keep salespeople happy on the job.
Trust, believed to have an affective and a cognitive compo-
nent (Jones 1996), has also been studied in the sales literature.
Trust between a customer and a salesperson is important
because trust enhances buyer satisfaction and purchase inten-
tions (Doney and Cannon 1997; Morgan and Hunt 1994).
While the cognitive antecedents of trust have received con-
siderable attention in past research (e.g., Lewis and Wiegert
1985; Simmel and Wolff 1964), more recent evidence suggests
that interpersonal liking mediates the development of trust of
a buyer toward a salesperson (Nicholson, Compeau, and Sethi
2001). This was found to be especially true as the relationship
between the buyer and salesperson matures—evidence indi-
cates that the mediating effect of liking overshadows cognitive
antecedents of trust in the relationship as it matures. In other
words, as the length of the relationship between the buyer and
salesperson increases, cognitive antecedents influence trust pri-
marily through affective feelings of liking (i.e., the emotional
attachment that the buyer has for the salesperson).
The role of trust in the relationship between sales managers
and salespeople is also important in sales management (e.g.,
Brashear et al. 2003; Lagace 1991; McNeilly and Lawson
1999; Rich 1997; Strutton, Pelton, and Lumpkin 1993). For
example, trust between a sales manager and a salesperson has
been shown to improve sales outcomes such as job satisfaction
(Lagace 1991). Atuahene-Gima and Li (2002) find that the
effect of a salesperson’s trust in his or her sales manager on his
or her sales performance may be moderated by factors such
as output control (e.g., the extent to which the sales manager
monitors job performance of a salesperson).
Rich (1997) suggests that a sales manager’s role-modeling
behavior (e.g., demonstrating by example how to interact
with a customer through his or her own behavior) facilitates
salesperson trust, leading to greater job satisfaction and better
overall job performance of a salesperson. Smith and Barclay
(1997) investigate the role of trust among selling partners,
viewing trust as two distinct components: a belief component
(e.g., role competence) and a behavioral component (e.g., rela-
tionship investment). They find that perceived trustworthiness
is a good predictor of trusting behavior.
In sales contexts, trust has also been studied from the cus-
tomer’s perspective (i.e., a customer’s trust of a salesperson)
(e.g., Wood et al. 2008; Young and Albaum 2003). From a
cognitive viewpoint, Wood et al. (2008) find that a customer’s
perception of a salesperson’s expertise is positively related to
 Winter 2013  11

Table 1
The Role of Affect in Personal Selling and Sales Management
Representative Theoretical
Category Articles Framework Findings/Conclusions

Positive Affect Verbeke, Belschak, and The broaden-and-build Positive emotion broadens one’s list of thoughts and actions in a
Bagozzi (2004) theory (Fredrickson given situation and helps one build resources from a long-term
2001) perspective.
Negative Affect Verbeke and Bagozzi Attention-based Anxiety is explained through attention biases and cognitive
(2000) cognitive anxiety processes. In threatening social situations, a salesperson with
models (Clark and anxiety increases his or her attention toward the threatening
Wells 1995) aspect of the situation, narrows his or her focus of attention,
and communicates poorly with customers.
Dahl, Honea, and Appraisal theory After formation of a social connectedness during customer–sales
Manchanda (2005) (Roseman 1984) interaction, the lack of a purchase may induce guilt within a
customer’s mind. Guilt may be derived from social appraisal, i.e.,
considering the well-being of others.
Coping Strategy Lewin and Sager (2009) Cognitive theory An individual follows two steps in dealing with stress. First, the
of psychological individual determines the relevancy of a potential stressor to
stress (Lazarus and his or her well-being to see whether anything can be done to
Folkman 1984) reduce negative effects. Second, an individual chooses a coping
strategy to deal with the issue.
McFarland (2003) Kelman’s (1958) theory Use of aggressive sales techniques can create a fear of personal
of identification rejection by the buyer. This fear does not support a positive self-
image and may generate negative feelings.
Cognitive dissonance Feelings of stress results from inconsistency between a
theory (Festinger salesperson’s behavior and his or her beliefs/attitudes.
1957)
Affect as Trait/Ability Kidwell, McFarland, Mental ability Emotional ability, the capability of reasoning about and using
and Avila (2007) framework (Mayer, emotion to accomplish certain outcomes, is associated with “the
Salovey, and Caruso capacity to perceive emotion.” This ability may influence the
2000) performance of salespeople.
Affect and Ethics Mantel (2005) Prospect theory The framing effect in prospect theory applies to ethical decision-
(Kahneman and making. The positive mood of salespeople reduces the framing
Tversky 1979) effect. Thus, salespeople in a positive mood are more likely to
make ethical decisions than those in a neutral mood.
Agnihotri et al. (2012) Cognitive-affective The cognitive-affective model emphasizes the role of affect on
model (Gaudine and ethical behavior. Emotional traits of a salesperson facilitate his or
Thorne 2001) her ethical attitudes, leading to ethical behavior.
Affect and Motivation Badovick, Hadaway, Attribution theory A certain outcome may lead an individual to consider the cause
and Kaminski (1992) of motivation and of that outcome. This causal attribution may generate future
emotion (Weiner expectations and emotional responses.
1985)
Brown, Cron, and Lazarus’s (1991a) Personal stakes of a salesperson (i.e., to what extent one’s well-
Slocum (1997) cognitive theory being, such as income and status, are affected) affect the level of
of emotion and one’s anticipated emotion. This anticipated emotion influences
adaptation salesperson motivation.
Affect and Puccinelli (2006) Mood-as-information Customers use their feelings as an information source in evaluating
Salesperson– approach (Schwarz a product or salesperson. Incongruence between customer and
Customer and Clore 1988) salesperson mood may lead to inferior evaluation of product or
Interaction salesperson.

the customer’s trust of the salesperson. However, in the context
of direct selling, Young and Albaum (2003) develop scales for
both cognitive components of trust (e.g., confidence in the
fairness of the salesperson) and affective components of trust
(e.g., feelings toward the salesperson).
Pride is another positive emotion studied in the sales lit-
erature. Building on the broaden-and-build theory of positive
emotions (Fredrickson 2001), Verbeke, Belschak, and Bagozzi
(2004) investigate how a salesperson’s pride, the “positive self-
conscious emotion” associated with a salesperson, benefits a
12  Journal of Personal Selling & Sales Management
sales organization. They find that a salesperson’s pride benefits
a sales organization by facilitating a salesperson’s motivation
(e.g., working harder to make a sale) and organizational citi-
zenship behavior (e.g., helping colleagues).
Negative Affect in Personal Selling and Sales Management
Negative affective situations common in sales contexts include
embarrassment, sales call anxiety, stress, and emotional exhaus-
tion (Babakus et al. 1999; Verbeke and Bagozzi 2000). Verbeke
and Bagozzi (2000) suggest that both in canvassing and in
closing, two common types of selling situations, negative
affectivity and anxiety-provoking contextual cues affect four
dimensions of sales call anxiety: negative self-evaluations, nega-
tive evaluations from customers, awareness of physiological
symptoms, and protective actions. They also suggest that these
four dimensions of anxiety negatively affect both communica-
tion performance and volume performance.
In a later study, Verbeke and Bagozzi (2003) distinguish
embarrassment from sales call anxiety by suggesting that
embarrassment is a reactive emotion, while sales call anxiety
is an anticipatory emotion. Accordingly, embarrassment is
defined as emotional reaction that occurs after unexpected
incidents (Miller 1996; Verbeke and Bagozzi 2003), whereas
sales call anxiety is described as a “pervasive anticipatory
emotion that occurs when people foresee a specific selling
situation as potentially damaging to their self-image and
performance” (Verbeke and Bagozzi 2003, p. 238). Verbeke
and Bagozzi (2003) further suggest that salespeople can
experience two different types of embarrassment when com-
municating with customers: one provoked by the customer
(e.g., an insulting comment) and another originating from the
salespeople themselves (e.g., mistakes made by salespeople).
Verbeke and Bagozzi (2003) believe that customer-provoked
and self-provoked embarrassment result in different coping
strategies.
Another negative affective state studied in the sales literature
is “emotional exhaustion,” which is a negative psychological
state caused by excessive demands on a person’s resources, such
as time and energy (e.g., Bacharach, Bamberger, and Conely
1991; Boles, Johnston, and Hair 1997; Gaines and Jermier
1983). Boles, Johnston, and Hair (1997) study emotional
exhaustion in a sales context. They find that both role conflict
and work–family conflict result in emotional exhaustion,
subsequently leading to a salesperson having a propensity to
leave an organization. Thus, they suggest, it is important for
sales managers to create a work environment that minimizes
not only role conflict but also work–family conflict.
Building on the work of Boles, Johnston, and Hair (1997),
Babakus et al. (1999) identify role ambiguity and role conflict
as antecedents of emotional exhaustion. Babakus et al. also
study organizational commitment, job satisfaction, inten-
tion to leave and performance as consequences of emotional
exhaustion. Jelinek and Ahearne (2006) further suggest that
stressed salespeople tend to depersonalize their relationship
with coworkers and managers, and easily engage in anticitizen-
ship behavior. They also argue that the effects of job stress on
anticitizenship behavior are moderated by individual factors
related to the salespeople, such as locus of control, introver-
sion, and self-monitoring.
Cultural differences are also important when examining the
role of negative affect in sales contexts. For instance, Bagozzi,
Verbeke, and Gavino (2003) compare the effects of shame on
sales performance in Dutch (an independence-based culture)
and Filipino (an interdependence-based culture) salespeople.
Their analysis reveals that the effects of shame on the sales
performance of salespeople from these two cultures are
completely different from each other. Whereas shame led to
negative sales performance (e.g., decreased sales) among Dutch
salespeople, shame resulted in positive sales performance
(e.g., better relationship building with the customer) among
Filipino salespeople.
Customers in sales scenarios can also experience negative
emotions. Dahl, Honea, and Manchanda (2005) study the
guilt that a customer may experience after interacting with a
salesperson and deciding not to make a purchase. They find
that once a customer interacts with a salesperson and feels a
social connectedness, the lack of a purchase induces a feeling
of guilt within the customer, which in turn fosters an intent
to engage in a behavior that would benefit the salesperson
(e.g., future intentions of purchasing something from the
salesperson).
Coping Strategies in Sales Situations
“Coping” is an important aspect of negative emotional situa-
tions (Lazarus 1991b), and refers to mechanisms that individu-
als use in an attempt to deal with psychologically demanding
situations that consume their internal and external resources
(Lazarus and Folkman 1984; Strutton and Lumpkin 1993,
1994). Coping is conceptually linked to emotion (Lazarus
1999, p. 37). Nonis and Sager (2003) investigate how sales-
people cope with negative affect such as stress and anxiety.
They suggest that two approaches can be used when studying
coping behavior in salespeople: a “coping behavior approach”
and a “coping style approach.” Whereas a coping behavior
approach is associated with how a salesperson acts in order to
deal with an acutely stressful isolated situation, a coping style
approach is associated with a salesperson’s attempt to deal
with chronic, long-term stress derived from his or her job or
other similar condition.
As negative affect may result in a negative outcome (e.g.,
burnout, lower job satisfaction, and lower performance),
salespeople try to cope with it through a problem-focused

coping style or an emotion-focused coping style (Srivastava
and Sager 1999). Effectively dealing with negative affect (e.g.,
stress) may help minimize negative outcomes (Srivastava and
Sager 1999). Whereas an individual with a problem-focused
coping style attempts to deal with stress directly by removing or
altering the cause of the stress, an individual with an emotion-
focused coping style deals with stress simply by avoiding such
situations or by being optimistic about the situation, without
confronting the cause of the stress directly (Nonis and Sager
2003; Srivastava and Sager 1999).
Crosno et al. (2009) find that optimism reduces burnout
among salespeople, helping them to cope with role stressors
such as role ambiguity and role conflict, and results in higher
job satisfaction and performance. While Crosno et al.’s work
involves the effect of internal characteristics, such as opti-
mism, on coping strategy, Nonis, Sager, and Kumar (1996)
investigate how salespeople can help influence someone higher
in the hierarchy (e.g., an immediate manager) to cope with
role stresses, as well as the subsequent effect on satisfaction
with supervision and propensity to leave when the role stress
exceeds expectations. They find that salespeople with higher
role stress (role conflict and role ambiguity) try to influence
their superiors more often than those with lower role stress.
Lewin and Sager (2009) similarly investigate whether cop-
ing strategy (i.e., a problem-focused or an emotion-focused
coping strategy) moderates the effect of role stressors on emo-
tional exhaustion. They find that a problem-focused coping
strategy successfully diminishes the impact of role stressors
(role conflict and role ambiguity) on emotional exhaustion.
Thus, they argue that a problem-focused coping strategy may
be an effective way to cope with role stressors, thus reducing
its impact on emotional exhaustion. In terms of the moderat-
ing effect of an emotion-focused coping strategy, their results
are somewhat mixed. Whereas the emotion-focused coping
strategy increased the effect of role conflict on emotional
exhaustion as expected, the emotion-focused coping strategy
unexpectedly diminished the effect of role ambiguity on
emotional exhaustion. The latter effect is contradictory to
past findings, such as those of Leiter (1991), which suggest
that an emotion-focused coping strategy increases the effect of
organizational stressors (i.e., work overload and interpersonal
conflict) on emotional exhaustion among workers. Thus,
there may be a need for further investigation to resolve these
contradictory findings.
Lewin and Sager (2008) investigate whether the effects of
sales manager support on emotional exhaustion is mediated
by coping. Their study on business-to-business (B2B) sales-
people suggests that sales manager support facilitates the use
of a problem-focused coping strategy, subsequently reducing
emotional exhaustion in salespeople. They also find that an
emotion-focused coping strategy not affected by sales manager
support increases emotional exhaustion in salespeople. In a
Winter 2013  13
related vein, Belschak, Verbeke, and Bagozzi (2006) investigate
how salespeople cope with sales call anxiety, introducing the
use of two tactics: sale perseverance and task concentration
to reduce protective actions, the most negative consequence
of social anxiety. Their study on business-to-consumer (B2C)
salespeople suggests that whereas task concentration is an
effective way to cope with sales call anxiety with high cogni-
tion, sale perseverance is an effective way to cope with sales
call anxiety with high physiological sensation.
More recently, Lewin and Sager (2010) investigate the
interactive effects of a salesperson’s coping style and personal
characteristics on turnover. Their study on B2B salespeople
indicates that whereas a problem-focused coping strategy
effectively reduces turnover intentions among salespeople with
high self-efficacy (versus low self-efficacy), an emotion-focused
coping strategy increases turnover intentions among sales-
people with high external locus of control. Their findings have
important implications for studies that examine the impact of
coping strategies on various types of sales outcomes, such as
emotional exhaustion, turnover, and sales performance.
Other studies in the area provide insight on the relation-
ship between personal characteristics and one’s coping strategy
(Nonis and Sager 2003; Srivastava and Sager 1999; Strutton,
Pelton, and Lumpkin 1995). Understanding this relationship
may help managers hire salespeople who can effectively cope
with stress (Bagozzi 1978). Strutton, Pelton, and Lumpkin
(1995) find that salespeople who are relatively more willing
to be challenged and who are more self-determined, and more
involved tend to use a problem-focused coping style, whereas
salespeople who are unwilling to change and view stressful
events as uncontrollable tend to simply avoid such situations.
Strutton, Pelton, and Lumpkin (1995) find that salespeople
with the latter characteristics often display poor sales perfor-
mance. This is consistent with findings in nonsales contexts
(e.g., Leiter 1991) that suggest that an emotion-focused coping
strategy is an ineffective way to both cope with stress and to
avoid negative consequences such as emotional exhaustion.
Srivastava and Sager (1999) investigate whether the per-
sonal characteristics of salespeople, such as locus of control,
self-efficacy, continuance commitment, and social support,
predict the use of either a problem-focused coping strategy or
an emotion-focused coping strategy. They find that whereas
a problem-focused coping strategy is associated with an
internal locus of control and self-efficacy beliefs, an emotion-
focused coping style is not predicted by any of the personal
characteristics.
Building on these findings, Nonis and Sager (2003)
investigate the relationship between coping strategy profiles
(problem-focused coping, emotion-focused coping, and time
management) and personality characteristics of salespeople
(locus of control, optimism, achievement striving, gender, and
sales expected). Assuming that a salesperson may have multiple
14  Journal of Personal Selling & Sales Management
coping strategies in his or her profile, Nonis and Sager (2003)
provide a perspective different from the traditional assumption
that an individual has the tendency to use just a single strategy
(Selye 1980; Srivastava and Sager 1999). The introduction of
time management behaviors as another component of coping
strategies is also an important contribution of their research.
Nonis and Sager suggest that a high degree of problem-focused
coping, a low degree of emotion-focused coping, and better
time management behavior generally characterize salespeople
who cope with stress relatively well.
Affect as Salesperson Trait/Ability
The study of affect as a trait or an ability in sales contexts is
important in understanding how salespeople deal with cus-
tomer emotion in salesperson–customer interactions. Success
in understanding customers’ emotions in a B2B or B2C sales
context depends not only on the ability (emotional intelli-
gence) of the salesperson (Rozell, Pettijohn, and Parker 2006),
but also on the individual traits (affective orientation) of the
salesperson (Sojka and Deeter-Schmelz 2008). Whereas the
former can be enhanced through training, the latter is usually
a tendency of each individual.
The affect-as-information theory (Schwarz and Clore
1988; Sojka and Deeter-Schmelz 2008) indicates that sales-
people sometimes use affect as a source of information when
interacting with customers. This tendency to use affect as
information during communication, decision making, and
so forth is known as the “affective orientation” of the sales-
person, and is believed to influence sales performance (Sojka
and Deeter-Schmelz 2008). “Dispositional affectivity” (either
positive or negative affectivity), defined as a salesperson trait,
is the salesperson’s tendency to experience positive (e.g., joy,
excitement) or negative (e.g., distress, anger) emotional states,
and affects sales performance (Rozell, Pettijohn, and Parker
2006). “Emotional intelligence” is defined as the ability to
assess and understand not only one’s own, but also others’
emotions and to use this understanding in formulating one’s
thoughts and behaviors (Rozell, Pettijohn, and Parker 2006;
Salovey and Mayer 1990). Whereas trait variables, such as
affective orientation and dispositional affectivity, are useful
in identifying good salespeople during the recruiting process,
the emotional intelligence of salespeople can be enhanced
through training (Rozell, Pettijohn, and Parker 2006; Sojka
and Deeter-Schmelz 2008).
Dawson, Soper, and Pettijohn (1992) study the effect of
empathy, an emotional trait, on sales performance. Despite
the intuitive supposition that empathy would facilitate sales
performance, they surprisingly did not find a significant rela-
tionship between empathy and sales performance. “Playful-
ness,” another affective trait, is described as “a propensity to
define (or redefine) an activity in an imaginative, non-serious
or metaphoric manner so as to enhance intrinsic enjoyment,
involvement and satisfaction” (Glynn and Webster 1992,
p. 85). Maxwell et al. (2005) investigate the effects of two
aspects of playfulness, the “fun-loving” and “frivolous” aspects,
on adaptive selling, job satisfaction, and job performance of
the salesperson. They find that the “fun-loving” dimension,
one aspect of playfulness, facilitates adaptive selling through
higher learning orientation, and increases job satisfaction by
reducing job stress. They find, however, that the “frivolous”
dimension, another aspect of playfulness that is associated
with immaturity and silliness, is negatively related to sales
performance.
Kidwell, McFarland, and Avila (2007) examine the mod-
erating effect of a salesperson’s ability to perceive customers’
emotions in a buyer–seller interaction on the relationship
between adaptive selling/customer-oriented selling and sales
performance. Based on their study of salespeople in B2B firms,
they find that a salesperson’s ability to perceive customers’ emo-
tions facilitates his or her use of adaptive selling and customer-
oriented selling in improving sales performance. In a similar
vein, Byron, Terranova, and Nowicki (2007) study a salesper-
son’s ability to read customer emotion through nonverbal cues
such as facial expressions. Using B2B and B2C salespeople as
participants, they find that the better the salesperson’s ability
to assess nonverbal cues, the more successful the salesperson
is likely to be in sales performance (e.g., more automobile
sales for an automobile salesperson). More recently, Kidwell
et al.’s (2011) study involving insurance agents suggests that
salespeople with higher emotional intelligence not only gener-
ate higher revenue but also retain customers better than those
with lower emotional intelligence.
Whereas emotional intelligence is associated with regulat-
ing one’s emotions to achieve one’s own benefits, “emotional
wisdom,” applied in sales contexts by Bagozzi, Belschak, and
Verbeke (2010), is associated with regulating one’s emotion
to achieve not only one’s own benefits but also the customer’s
and/or firm’s benefits. The authors suggest that salespeople
with higher emotional wisdom show better coping behavior
in emotionally challenging incidents than those with lower
emotional wisdom. Bagozzi, Belschak, and Verbeke (2010) fur-
ther argue that salespeople with higher emotional wisdom take
not only their own interests, but also other people’s interests,
into consideration. Such salespeople tend to earn the trust of
others more easily, and build better social relationships with
colleagues, customers, and others.
Ricks and Veneziano (1998) study the effects of personality
traits such as empathy, as well as the gender of a salesperson
on sales performance. They find that while empathy is posi-
tively related with sales volume among saleswomen, empathy
is negatively related with sales volume among salesmen. They
explain this interaction effect of gender and empathy on sales
volume by suggesting that customers are more likely to buy

from a salesperson who is consistent with his or her gender
stereotype.
Affect and Sales Ethics
Salespeople, especially in certain industries, are sometimes
perceived as being less than ethical in their interactions with
their customers, and there may be some evidence supporting
this perception. A study of sales executives suggest that at least
50 percent suspect that their salespeople may have lied to their
clients and 75 percent believe that their salespeople may have
stopped focusing on their clients’ needs (Strout 2002). Other
studies suggest at least half of all sales managers are concerned
about their salespeople stealing accounts and leads (Ingram,
Laforge, and Schwepker 2007; Stewart 2003). This situation
should be of grave concern to sales managers, who need better
insight to minimize such ethical misconduct.
Consistent with such rising concern about the ethical
behavior of salespeople, researchers have examined affect and
ethics from both a salesperson’s and a customer’s perspective.
While some researchers have studied a customer’s affective
responses as a consequence of a customer’s ethical percep-
tion of a salesperson’s behavior (e.g., Babin, Griffin, and
Boles 2004), others have studied the effects of the affective
state or affective traits of a salesperson on his or her ethical
behavior (e.g., Agnihotri et al. 2012; Mantel 2005). Babin,
Griffin, and Boles (2004) investigate how customers form
ethical perceptions while interacting with a salesperson and
the subsequent effects of these perceptions on customer emo-
tions and purchase intentions. They find that moral equity (a
customer’s perception that he or she has been treated fairly by
a salesperson) fosters positive emotions and inhibits negative
emotions. They also find that while positive emotions enhance
future purchase intentions, negative emotions hinder future
purchase intentions.
Mantel (2005) examines a salesperson’s affective state as a
predictor of his or her ethical behavior. Investigating whether
mood affects ethical decision making among salespeople, she
suggests that salespeople in a positive mood are more likely to
make ethical decisions than those in a neutral mood. Mantel
explains this finding by proposing that positive affect results
in “cognitive flexibility,” and helps salespeople to look beyond
the short-term sales situation at hand. The study has impor-
tant managerial implications, indicating how managers can
facilitate ethical decision making and behavior among their
salespeople.
More recently, using Gaudine and Thorne’s (2001) cogni-
tive-affective model as a theoretical foundation, Agnihotri et
al. (2012) examine the effects of emotional traits (i.e., capac-
ity for empathy and capacity for guilt) of salespeople on their
ethical attitude and ethical behavior. The cognitive-affective
model (Gaudine and Thorne 2001) views affect as a major
Winter 2013  15
component of rational ethical behavior, rather than viewing
affect as something that hinders rational ethical behavior.
Following their empirical study on salespeople, Agnihotri et
al. (2012) conclude that both of the emotional traits studied,
empathy (a positive emotion) and guilt (a negative emotion),
positively affect a salesperson’s ethical attitudes and result in
ethical behavior.
Affect and Salesperson Motivation
Building on attribution theory, Badovick, Hadaway, and
Kaminski (1992) examine the effects of the emotional reac-
tions of salespeople on their motivation when they success-
fully or unsuccessfully meet sales quotas. They find that the
emotional reactions of the salesperson significantly influence
the motivation of the salesperson. The effects of emotional
reactions on motivation are more pronounced after failure
outcomes than after success outcomes. Similarly, building on
Lazarus’s (1991a) cognitive theory of emotion and adaptation,
Brown, Cron, and Slocum (1997) investigate the effects of
goal-directed emotions on the motivation, behavior, perfor-
mance, and outcome emotion of salespeople. By tracking
emotions between two periods, three months apart, they find
that anticipated emotions are significant determinants of the
motivation, future behavior, and future outcome emotion of
salespeople.
More recently, Martin and Bush (2006) examine how the
“psychological climate” surrounding a sales force may affect a
salesperson’s usage of customer-oriented selling. “Psychologi-
cal climate,” defined as a relatively stable perception shared
by members of an organization, has several subdimensions
(support, recognition, fairness, innovation, autonomy, trust,
cohesiveness, and pressure), as proposed by Koys and DeCotiis
(1991) (Martin and Bush 2006). Martin and Bush’s analysis
indicates that only certain components of psychological cli-
mate (support, autonomy, and cohesiveness) affect customer-
oriented selling. It should be noted that Martin and Bush
suggest that the construct of “psychological climate” may need
to be conceptualized differently for sales contexts.
Affect and Salesperson–Customer Interaction
The examination of customer emotions generated during
customer–salesperson interactions, including the antecedents
and consequences of these emotions, has been the subject of
several studies (e.g., Babin, Boles, and Darden 1995; Kim,
Ju, and Johnson 2009; Lee and Dubinsky 2003; Lee et al.
2011; Mallalieu and Nakamoto 2008). The antecedents of the
customer emotions studied include the salesperson’s appear-
ance (Kim, Ju, and Johnson 2009), perceived attributes of a
salesperson (e.g., trustworthiness, expertise, friendliness, acces-
sibility, empathy, professional appearance of a salesperson) (Lee
16  Journal of Personal Selling & Sales Management
and Dubinsky 2003; Lee et al. 2011), and salesperson stereo-
type (Babin, Boles, and Darden 1995). The consequences
of the customer emotions studied include perceived store
image (Kim, Ju, and Johnson 2009), customer satisfaction
with the relationship with the salesperson (Lee and Dubinsky
2003; Lee et al. 2011), and product information processing
(Babin, Boles, and Darden 1995). Mallalieu and Nakamoto
(2008) suggest that there is an interaction effect of customer
motivation (assessment oriented versus action oriented) and
selling strategy of the salesperson on the customer’s emotional
response toward a salesperson.
In sales interactions, both customers and salespeople can
display either positive or negative emotions. Bagozzi (2006)
identifies social emotions in the context of interpersonal
relationships between a customer and a salesperson: pride,
attachment, empathy, and emotional wisdom, among positive
emotions; and guilt, shame, embarrassment, envy, jealousy,
and social anxiety among negative emotions. He suggests that
these social emotions, which are different from basic emotions
(e.g., happiness, fear), help organize the reactions of individu-
als by assisting them to better deal with social relations.
Sutton and Rafaeli (1988) studied the effect of displayed
emotions of salespeople on store sales. Through their study on
store clerks at convenience stores, they found an unexpected
negative relationship between the display of positive emotions
and sales in the stores. An analysis of this negative relationship
revealed that salespeople at busy stores with high sales tend to
display neutral emotions, whereas salespeople at slow-paced
stores tend to display positive emotions, as they have relatively
less pressure for efficiency (see Erevelles, Dutta, and Galantine
2004). Thus, an emotional display is a consequence rather than
a predictor of store pace, as reflected in store sales.
Further examining the displayed emotions of customers,
Menon and Dube (2000) study how customers display emo-
tions at retail stores and how salespeople respond to these
emotions. Their analysis reveals that salespeople often fail to
meet customers’ expectations when dealing, in particular, with
negative emotions such as anger and anxiety, and this leads
to lower customer satisfaction. The authors underscore the
importance of salesperson training in dealing with negative
emotions, in particular.
While these two studies (i.e., Menon and Dube 2000;
Sutton and Rafaeli 1988) focus on either the salesperson or
the customer side of the displayed emotion, Verbeke (1997)
examines “emotional contagion” in a sales context (i.e., emo-
tion of a customer or a salesperson that is transmitted to other
participants in the sales scenario). According to their analyses,
on one hand, a salesperson’s ability to both transmit his or
her emotions to a customer and to recognize a customer’s
emotions enhances his or her sales performance. On the other
hand, the tendency to assess customer emotion may also lead
to salesperson burnout. Building on these aforementioned
studies, Puccinelli (2006) further examines how a match of
mood between a customer and a salesperson has an effect on
the evaluation of a product during the customer–salesperson
interaction. She concludes that when interacting with a happy
salesperson, an unhappy customer feels even worse due to
the discrepancy between each other’s moods, resulting in a
lower evaluation of the products promoted by that happy
salesperson.
Future Research Directions
Building on an understanding of the current state of the litera-
ture on affect and sales, we now propose ten general directions
for future research. See Table 2 for a general summary of the
issues and benefits associated with each direction. In this sec-
tion, we briefly identify the gap that exists in each area and
propose some general directions for future research.
Cross-Cultural Research on Affect and Sales
More research that includes cross-cultural perspectives when
investigating the role of affect in personal selling is needed. As
more firms now have global sales forces, sales and marketing
managers need to know whether and how they need to manage
sales forces in each country differently. For instance, Bagozzi,
Verbeke, and Gavino (2003) point out that the effects of shame
on the sales performance of salespeople in the two different
cultures studied by them are completely different. Thus, it is
crucial to analyze cultural differences as a potential moderator
in studying the effects of affect on a salesperson’s behavior.
For instance, how do salespeople in different countries and
cultures (e.g., a collectivist culture versus an individualist
culture) cope with negative emotions such as stress or anxiety,
and how would these coping strategies impact their behavior
differently? Such studies would help managers in global firms
improve the productivity of their sales teams worldwide. Better
insight into selling to ethnic groups is also needed.
A Wider Range of Positive Affective Processes in
Sales Contexts
More theoretical insight is needed to better understand the
effects of a wider range of positive affective processes in per-
sonal selling and sales management. Thus far, some researchers
have investigated the effect of positive affect such as trust (e.g.,
Brashear et al. 2003; Young and Albaum 2003) and pride (e.g.,
Verbeke, Belschak, and Bagozzi 2004) in sales contexts. Unlike
negative emotions, positive affect may not be directly linked
to specific actions (Fredrickson 2001). We thus need more
theoretical insight specifically focused on different positive
emotions in sales contexts. Sales-oriented researchers can take
advantage of existing theories of positive emotions, such as the
 Winter 2013  17

Table 2
Future Research
Topics General Issue/Benefit

Cross-Cultural Research on
Affect and Sales
A Wider Range of Positive
Affective Processes in Sales
Contexts
Automatic Affective Responses
in Sales Contexts
Measurement Issues Related to
Affect in Sales Contexts
Affect and Ethics in Sales
Affect and Personality Traits in
Sales Contexts
Affect and Virtual Selling
Affect and the Prediction of
Sales Outcomes
Affect and Gender in Sales
Contexts
Affect and Creativity in Sales
Contexts
More firms now have global sales forces. A better understanding of cross-cultural issues as they relate to
the behavior and performance of salespeople is needed. Better insight into selling to ethnic groups is also
needed.
A better understanding, including theoretical frameworks, of how different types of positive affect lead to
better sales outcomes is needed.
Automatic affective responses play an important role in salesperson-customer interactions. More research is
needed to understand the antecedents and consequences of automatic affective responses and their impact
on salespeople and customers.
As physiological measures have an advantage of capturing initial affective responses, researchers are
encouraged to explore the use of portable measurement devices in investigating affective responses in sales
contexts.
In hypercompetitive marketplaces, ethics and values become extremely important. Further work is needed to
understand how salespeople’s affective states influence their ethical behavior.
Affective traits and skills are clearly associated with sales performance. More research in this area would be
beneficial to recruiting and training salespeople.
More research is needed to understand affective responses of customers toward virtual versus real
salespeople and the subsequent effects on sales outcomes.
Salespeople and sales managers have access to vast amounts of unconsciously learned sales insight that they
may never fully exploit. More insight into these unconscious or semiconscious intuitive affective processes in
sales contexts is needed.
More research is needed to understand the moderating roles of affect and gender on sales outcomes.
The creativity of a salesperson may facilitate his or her sales performance. Research that provides insight into
the relationship between affect and creativity, and the subsequent effect on sales outcomes, is needed.

broaden-and-build theory (Fredrickson 2001) to advance the
study of positive affect in the sales literature. The broaden-and-
build theory suggests that positive emotions may broaden one’s
mind and help individuals build various personal resources for
the long term, including intellectual, physical, social, and psy-
chological resources. Building on these suggestions, it would
be interesting to see, for instance, which positive emotions
help salespeople build better long-term relationships with
customers, thus facilitating sales performance.
people affect their sales performance. Winkielman, Berridge,
and Wilbarger (2005) find that showing a person happy versus
angry faces affects his or her consumption behavior. Thus,
customers may subconsciously detect positive or negative
automatic affective responses in salespeople, and this in turn
may subconsciously affect their purchasing behavior. It would
serve us well to advance our understanding of the effects of
such automatic affective responses not only of salespeople but
also of customers in sales contexts.

Automatic Affective Responses in Sales Contexts
Baumeister et al. (2007) propose that while some affective
responses (e.g., guilt, shame) are consciously experienced,
other affective responses (e.g., liking, disliking) are rapid and
automatic and tend to shape immediate behavior. Researchers
are encouraged to further investigate the effect of such auto-
matic, affective responses on behavior in sales situations. For
example, while interacting with customers, salespeople may
experience rapid, automatic affective responses, such as liking
or disliking a customer. Liking may result in the salesperson
projecting a “happy” face, whereas disliking may result in the
salesperson projecting the opposite reaction. It would be useful
to understand how these rapid emotional responses of sales-
Measurement Issues Related to Affect in Sales Contexts
Poels and Dewitte (2006) suggest that there are two types
of measures of affect: self-report measures and physiological
measures (e.g., skin conductivity, heart rate). Whereas self-
report measures, although relatively easy to administer, suffer
from a cognitive bias, physiological measures allow researchers
to immediately and continuously measure affect without a
cognitive bias (Erevelles 1998; Erevelles and Horton 1998;
Poels and Dewitte 2006). Micu and Plummer (2010) argue
that while self-reported measures reflect conscious emotional
responses, physiological measures capture automatic emotional
responses. Partly because it is relatively complex to administer
physiological measures and to interpret the results (Poels and
18  Journal of Personal Selling & Sales Management
Dewitte 2006), verbal self-report measures remain a popular
method in the study of affect in the sales literature.
However, some researchers have successfully utilized physi-
ological measures to measure automatic emotion in marketing
contexts. Reimann et al. (2012) used skin conductance mea-
sures, in conjunction with traditional self-report measures, to
capture emotional arousal in the context of consumer–brand
relationships. Researchers in personal selling and sales man-
agement can also take advantage of such methodologies and
apply physiological measures, at least in limited sales contexts.
Recently, portable physiological measurement devices (e.g.,
portable skin conductance devices) have gained popularity,
and may be useful in measuring a salesperson’s automatic
affective responses while interacting with customers in actual
sales encounters. These types of rapid, automatic affective
responses are relatively difficult to capture with self-report
measures and may provide considerable theoretical and
managerial insight.
Affect and Ethics in Sales
In hypercompetitive marketplaces, ethics and values become
extremely important. As stated earlier, even their own manag-
ers sometimes perceive salespeople to be potentially unethical,
especially in high-pressure, competitive situations. There are
many gaps in the literature and more research that examines
the role of affect in the ethical decision-making process of
a salesperson is needed. For instance, Mantel (2005) points
out that she investigates only the effect of positive (but not
negative) versus neutral mood on ethical decision making
among salespeople. As some studies suggest that an indi-
vidual in a negative mood lacks self-control and that negative
moods induce self-defeating motivations (Tice, Bratslavsky,
and Baumeister 2001), it may, for example, be interesting to
investigate the effect of negative moods in the ethical decision-
making process of a salesperson.
Recently, Agnihotri et al. (2012) investigated the role of
emotional traits (i.e., capacity for empathy and guilt) on ethical
attitudes and behaviors of a salesperson. Agnihotri et al. call
for more research that investigates the effect of other types
of discrete emotions (e.g., pride) on a salesperson’s ethical
decision making. They also suggest that researchers should
investigate potential moderating factors, such as ethical climate
and salesperson management systems, in studying the effect
of emotion on ethical decision making. In this context, more
empirical studies using salespeople as subjects in actual field
studies are needed.
Affect and Personality Traits in Sales Contexts
As early as 1997, Brown, Cron, and Slocum called for more
research on the determinants of anticipated negative emo-
tions of salespeople and personality variables (e.g., need for
achievement, self-efficacy) in the context of a salesperson’s
goal-directed behavior. Managerially, such research may help
sales managers better motivate and train salespeople to achieve
sales goals. Recently, Lewin and Sager (2010) find an interac-
tion effect of personal characteristics (e.g., self-efficacy, external
locus of control) and coping strategy (e.g., problem focused
versus emotion focused) on a salesperson’s turnover intentions.
Thus, in investigating the effects of coping strategy on sales
outcomes (e.g., salesperson turnover and sales performance),
researchers may want to consider analyzing personal charac-
teristics of salespeople as potential moderators.
Overall, more research that examines the effect of sales-
person personality on affect in sales contexts is needed. Such
research could help sales managers better train their salespeople
and help salespeople handle their emotions more effectively.
Sales managers could also gain some insight into how to
better use emotions as a source of motivation within a sales
organization. Such research could also assist sales managers
in better identifying potentially productive salespeople during
the hiring process.
Affect and Virtual Selling
Although exchanges within the virtual marketplace are cur-
rently close to $2  billion per year, we have relatively little
understanding of the sales processes associated with virtual
selling environments (Berthon et al. 2010). In an attempt to
improve the customer’s experience, some companies have used
online salespeople (recommendation agents) to provide cus-
tomers with assistance needed to shop online (Komiak, Wang,
and Benbasat 2005). It is no secret that a significant number
of customers leave online stores without purchasing anything
due to a lack of real-time sales assistance (Sivaramakrishnan,
Wan, and Tang 2007). Sivaramakrishnan, Wan, and Tang
(2007) conduct an exploratory study on the effect of online
salespeople (recommendation agents) on customer response,
such as customer attitudes and purchase intentions. They
find that recommendation agents fosters attitudes toward
the product as well as purchase intentions, especially when
the Web site provides customers with only limited amounts
of information.
More research that investigates the role of affect within such
virtual selling environments is clearly needed. Komiak, Wang,
and Benbasat (2005) compare the process of trust building
with customers in virtual versus real sales environments, and
find that trust-building processes are different in virtual and
real sales environments. Building on this work, it would be
interesting, for instance, to study customer emotions that
virtual versus real salespeople generate, and then compare the
subsequent effects on sales performance. Building on Kim,
Ju, and Johnson’s (2009) study on the effects of salesperson

appearance on customer emotions, it would be interesting to
study how a virtual salesperson’s appearance generates cus-
tomer emotions. Also, although virtual salespeople provide
a semblance of the “human touch” (Sivaramakrishnan, Wan,
and Tang 2007) in a virtual sales environment, is an online
salesperson sophisticated enough to assess customers’ emo-
tions during a sales interaction? As virtual sales environments
become more and more competitive, the affective aspects of
sales interactions may provide a relatively sustainable competi-
tive advantage.
Affect and the Prediction of Sales Outcomes
In recent years, there has been an increasing body of evidence
suggesting that reliance on feelings and emotions may help
improve one’s ability to predict future outcomes (Klein 2004;
Pham, Lee, and Stephen 2012). For example, Pham, Lee, and
Stephen (2012) demonstrate an intriguing occurrence. Indi-
viduals with higher trust in their feelings can predict future
outcomes with more accuracy than those with lower trust in
their feelings, provided that they have sufficient background
knowledge of the prediction domain. The authors hypothesize
that this occurs because trusting one’s feelings opens oneself
to substantial amounts of unconsciously learned information
that is assessed from memory.
Salespeople and sales managers have access to vast amounts
of unconsciously learned sales insight that they may never
fully exploit. This may be because sales professionals generally
tend to rely more on rational thinking in the prediction of
future sales outcomes than they do on feelings and emotions.
While this is not necessarily bad, it should be remembered that
most buying situations, even in B2B contexts, involve people
whose decisions rely on feelings and emotions. There may be
more to what traditionally has been considered “gut feelings”
about the future in sales contexts, and it may have more to
do with unconscious or semiconscious affective processes
than has previously been acknowledged. More insight about
these processes in sales contexts is needed. Such insight may
encourage salespeople and sales managers to trust their feel-
ings more when planning for the future than they do today.
More insight may also be needed on “salesperson intuition”
and “sales premonitions,” along the lines of the work of Bem
(2011).
Affect and Gender Issues in Sales Contexts
Simon and Nath (2004) study the difference between self-
reported emotions of men and women in the United States.
They suggest that while men tend to report positive emo-
tions of calmness and excitement more often, women tend
to report negative emotions of anxiety and sadness more
often. It would be interesting to investigate such gender dif-
Winter 2013  19
ferences involving affective experiences in sales contexts. For
instance, do salesmen and saleswomen cope with negative
emotion (e.g., stress) differently within an organization? Do
salesmen and saleswomen display different types of emotion
while interacting with a customer? Is the effect of salesperson
attractiveness on customer emotion moderated by the gender
of the salesperson?
Ricks and Veneziano (1998) study the effects of the per-
sonality traits (e.g., empathy) and salesperson gender on sales
performance. Ricks and Veneziano assert that while empathy
is positively related with sales volume among saleswomen,
empathy is negatively related to sales volume among salesmen.
They suggest that this interaction effect of gender and empathy
on sales volume is explained by gender stereotype. Customers
are more likely to buy from a salesperson who is consistent
with his or her gender stereotype. Russ and McNeilly (1988)
indicate that gender stereotypes exist in the minds of custom-
ers. McElroy and DeCarlo (1999) study the role of physical
attractiveness in the evaluation of a saleswoman’s performance.
Unexpectedly, they find that physical attractiveness has little
effect on the cognitive processes involved in evaluating the
performance of the saleswoman. Overall, more studies are
needed that investigate the role of gender on affect in personal
selling and sales management.
Affect and Creativity in Sales Contexts
In today’s competitive marketplace, creativity is critical if
an organization expects to achieve a competitive advantage,
even in the short term (Erevelles, Horton, and Fukawa 2007).
Creativity is also extremely important in sales contexts, as the
creativity of a salesperson (e.g., his or her creative problem-
solving ability) may facilitate his or her sales performance
(Wang and Netemeyer 2004). Wang and Netemeyer (2004)
develop measures for the creative performance of salespeople
that reflect the extent of new idea generation of a salesperson
during his or her sales-related activities.
More research is needed that takes advantage of such
measures of creativity within a sales organization to further
understand how to stimulate the creativity of salespeople.
Affect may be a key factor that facilitates creativity in sales-
people. For instance, positive mood (e.g., happiness) is
believed to enhance creativity (Baas, De Dreu, and Nijstad
2008). Research that provides more insight on the relationship
between affect and sales creativity, and its subsequent effect
on sales outcomes such as sales performance and customer
satisfaction, is clearly needed.
Conclusion
It would be fair to conclude that the importance of the role of
affect in personal selling and sales management contexts has
20  Journal of Personal Selling & Sales Management
been increasingly realized in recent years. Substantial prog-
ress has been made in understanding how affective processes
influence various sales phenomena. This progress should not,
however, be overstated. Although the role of affect in sales
contexts is now an integral part of the discussion of most sales
phenomena, much more insight is still needed in several areas
where research has been relatively sparse. The increasingly
expanding body of findings still has many gaps in it. Some of
these have been identified in this paper and directions for future
research have been suggested. It is important for salespeople
and sales managers to be up-to-date on the rapid advances
in the understanding of affective processes in fields such as
psychology, neuroscience, and consumer behavior, and apply
these advances in sales contexts. In markets that are increas-
ingly hypercompetitive, the future of personal selling and sales
management will depend increasingly on our understanding of
affective processes to achieve a competitive advantage.
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