Psychology Commons^™

Engaging Experts: Overcoming Trust In Risky Environments, Cynthia Goodwin-Sak

Dissertations

In business-to-business sales environments, sellers may choose to bring their go-to expert to a customer meeting, even when there is an expert available who may be more skilled in the product being discussed. The purpose of this study is to identify if an intervention of data, trust transference, ingroup identity, or a combination, influence the choice of expert a salesperson engages for a customer meeting. We tested this question through a series of vignettes and hierarchical linear modeling. The sample came from a US-based technology company, and salespeople in the United States.

We found that trust transference influenced both choice …