Psychology Commons^™

Salespeople's Renqing Orientation, Self-Esteem, And Selling Behaviors: An Empirical Study In Taiwan, Ming-Hong Tsai, Shu-Cheng Steve Chi, Hsia-Hua Hu

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

The purpose of this study was to investigate how salespeople's renqing orientation and self-esteem jointly affect their selling behavior.Data were obtained from a survey of salespeople from 17 pharmaceutical and consumer-goods companies in Taiwan (n = 216).Salespeople's renqing orientation (i.e., their propensity to adhere to the accepted norm of reciprocity) compensates the negative effect of self-esteem on their selling behaviors, such as adaptive selling and hard work.Our study results underscore the critical role of the character trait of renqing orientation in a culture emphasizing a norm of reciprocity. Therefore, it would be useful to consider a strategy of recruiting salespeople …