The Customer Orientation of Salesperson for Performance in Korean Market Case: A Relationship between Customer Orientation and Adaptive Selling

The role of the salesperson has been more highlighted in recent research for company profits and sustainable relationship with customers. This study attempts to classify sales behaviors into a conceptual structure of customer orientation and adaptive selling in order to examine the effect of the customer orientation and adaptive selling on organizational performance and sales performance. The study newly compares the relationship between salespeople’s customer orientation and adaptive selling in terms of the organizational aspect of the organizational delivering market value and the behavioral aspect of individual delivering. Results show that customer orientation affects adaptive selling behaviors of salespeople, and such behaviors affect the salespeople’s organizational identification and their sales performance. However, the effect of their organization identification on sales performance was not supported. This result suggests the need for educational programs which provide the salesperson with opportunities to understand customer-oriented organizational culture. In addition, such programs need to empower salespeople to develop positive corporate identities.