Business Research

3. Ch. 3 - 6 -- You observe the following condition: "Our female sales representatives have lower customer defections than do our male sales representatives."

a. Propose the concepts and constructs you might use to study this phenomenon.

Constructs of lower female defection rates include sales (wo)manship and the likeability of the saleswomen relative to the men. Within the construct of salesmanship, the concepts of study include performance during training programs, supervisor-observed performance, and customer feedback. Likeability of the employees is more difficult to define and could include concepts such as: personality, physical attractiveness, and tidiness. These concepts can be subdivided even further to capture specific, observable items. One Denver sales manager described some subdivisions of supervisor-observed performance that he personally evaluated to be higher in his female employees. These characteristics included things such as: professionalism, energy, self-motivation, integrity, and the production of higher results (Skaer, 2012, p. 10-12).

b. How might any of these concepts and/or constructs be related to explanatory hypotheses?

One explanatory hypothesis could be identified to be "increasing our percentage of female sales representatives will lower our overall customer defection rate." If the construct of likeability proves to be the primary reason for lower defection, then increasing the female population may not solve the issue entirely. Managers should also focus on improving 'pleasing qualities' in all of its sales representatives. One study found that the female voice carries a more complex and pleasing 'melody' while the male voice holds a more 'fix-it mentality' ("Perception," 2005). The previously mentioned Denver sales manager capitalized on this type of phenomenon by assigning female sales representatives to interact with customers during the initial and follow-up meetings and using males to fulfill customer needs for technical and product replacement areas (Skaer, 2012, p. 10,12). If female sales personnel are minorities in the company, it is also possible that increasing their percentage will result in a wider variation of salesmanship among them. In this case the male population likely already experiences a wide variation, with some employees being very good salesmen and others substandard.