Salesperson Customer Orientation

What it measures

Measures a customer's perception that a salesperson adopted a problem-solving approach, acted in the customer's best interests, and recommended products best suited to their needs. Used in a field study of 537 salesperson–customer interactions across 28 car dealership chains in 11 cities. Adapted from a five-item customer orientation subscale by Thomas, Soutar, and Ryan (2001), which was itself derived from the SOCO scale (Saxe & Weitz 1982). Distinct from the similar Wieseke, Alavi & Habel (2014) version (ID 673), which uses different item phrasing and comes from a different study.

Response format

7-point (1=not at all, 7=extremely)

Scale items

• The salesperson has taken a problem-solving approach in selling products or services to me.
• The salesperson had my best interests in mind.
• The salesperson has recommended products or services to me that are best suited to solve my problems.

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

Usage notes & scoring

Response anchors: not at all (1) to extremely (7). AVE = .67. Discriminant validity indicated. Adapted from Thomas, Soutar, & Ryan (2001), Journal of Personal Selling & Sales Management, 21(1), 63–69, which was derived from Saxe & Weitz (1982) SOCO scale. Distinct from ID 673 (Wieseke, Alavi & Habel 2014), which uses different items and comes from a different paper.

Recommended companion scales

Citation

Alavi, S., Wieseke, J., & Guba, J.H. (2016). Saving on discounts through accurate sensing – Salespeople's estimations of customer price importance and their effects on negotiation success. Journal of Retailing, 92(1), 40–55.

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