Impression Management of the Salesperson

What it measures

This scale measures the extent to which a customer believes a particular salesperson manipulated them by creating false and/or deceptive impressions to achieve a favorable response. Burchett, Murtha, and Kohli (2023) used it in Study 2b with data from 270 U.S. MTurk participants who had interacted in person with a salesperson in the previous three days, adopting and slightly adapting items used by Spiro and Perreault (1979) and Chakrabarty, Brown, and Widing (2010).

Response format

7-point Likert

Scale items

• The salesperson seemed to exaggerate the extent to which she/he would have to bend the rules to help me.
• Some of the salesperson's comments appeared to be made casually but were intended to impress me favorably.
• The salesperson made it look like some of the efforts on my behalf required more effort than they really did.
• The salesperson gave me the impression she/he did not have the authority to act on some of my requests she/he declined.

Full scale items shown. Always cite the original source when using this scale in research.

Usage notes & scoring

Alpha was .86 (Burchett, Murtha, and Kohli 2023, Web Appendix, p. 14). A CFA in Study 2b supported the scale's unidimensionality and discriminant validity relative to several other scales in the study (pp. 597; Web Appendix pp. 11, 14); the AVE was .61.

Citation

Burchett, Molly R., Brian Murtha, and Ajay K. Kohli (2023), "Secondary Selling: Beyond the Salesperson-Customer Dyad," Journal of Marketing, 87 (4), 575-600.

Keywords