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Dissertation
When Salespeople Come Calling (For Payment!): the Effect of Late Payment Collection on Customer-Directed Deviance and Seller-Buyer Relationships
Washington State University
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), Washington State University
2023
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.7273/000005311
Abstract
The study of sales-accounting interface is a nascent area in the literature. The sales-accounting interface studies salespeople’s engagement and influence on accounting activities. One such accounting activity is holding salespeople responsible for late payments, which is a job responsibility that some sales organizations impose on their salespeople after the point of the initial sale. However, whether salespeople should be held responsible for late-paying accounts remains controversial among industry insiders, and there is little research on the issue. The current dissertation addresses these limitations by examining how holding salespeople responsible for late payments influences their engagement in customer-directed deviance in Essay 1. Additionally, Essay 2 investigates whether having salespeople collect late payments has a negative impact on the relationships between sellers and buyers.
In Essay 1, using insights gleaned from a qualitative study, a survey, and a scenario-based experiment, I found that holding salespeople responsible for late payment is commonly used among sales organizations. Based on whether the obligation on late-paying accounts is imposed physically or monetarily, salespeople can be held (or not held) responsible for late payments in four different ways: no responsibility (i.e., none), collection only (i.e., physically), compensation on paid accounts (i.e., monetarily), and full responsibility (i.e., physically and monetarily). Among these approaches, collection only significantly reduces salespeople’s engagement in customer-directed deviance.
Another concern some sales organizations have is whether requiring salespeople to collect late payments will adversely affect seller-buyer relationships. Essay 2 addresses this concern by building a framework based on insights gleaned from interviews with business-to-business (B2B) buyers and building on attribution theory. The results show that when being contacted by salespeople for late payment collection, buyers are likely to experience heightened feelings of guilt when the buying firm is responsible for causing the late payment, which in turn will positively affect seller-buyer relationships at firm and salesperson levels.
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Details
- Title
- When Salespeople Come Calling (For Payment!)
- Creators
- Muzi Liu
- Contributors
- U.N. Umesh (Advisor)Jeff Joireman (Advisor)Elizabeth Howlett (Committee Member)Bryan Hochstein (Committee Member)
- Awarding Institution
- Washington State University
- Academic Unit
- Carson College of Business
- Theses and Dissertations
- Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), Washington State University
- Publisher
- Washington State University
- Number of pages
- 110
- Identifiers
- 99901031240901842
- Language
- English
- Resource Type
- Dissertation