Customer-oriented salespeople’s value creation and claiming in price negotiations
研究客户导向型销售人员在价格谈判中的矛盾效应：他们能为客户创造价值以减少价格让步，但可能过度关注客户需求而不敢坚持高价；只有当销售经理灌输高价合理性信心时，才能有效利用创造的价值进行谈判，而利润相关激励可减少客户导向的负面后果。
Abstract Although customer orientation is widely endorsed as a crucial salesperson characteristic, little is known about its effect in price negotiations with customers. This study rectifies this omission and argues for its ambiguous effects. While customer-oriented salespeople create value for customers that enables them to reduce price concessions, they may overly focus on customers’ needs and, in doing so, hesitate to defend against such requests. Results of two quantitative studies and one preliminary qualitative study reveal that customer-oriented salespeople do not unconditionally benefit from their created value in price negotiations with customers. That is, salespeople effectively leverage their created value to negotiate prices with customers only if their sales managers instill confidence that high prices are justified. Furthermore, we find that profit-related incentives reduce undesired consequences of salespeople’s customer orientation in price negotiations.