SOCO — Selling Orientation–Customer Orientation Scale

What it measures

Measures the degree to which salespeople practise the marketing concept by trying to help customers make purchase decisions that satisfy their needs, as opposed to focusing on making the sale regardless of customer fit. Customer-oriented salespeople identify customer needs, avoid deceptive tactics, offer products that genuinely satisfy those needs, and take a long-term relationship view. Selling-oriented salespeople focus on closing the sale, use high-pressure tactics, and prioritise short-term transactions. The SOCO is foundational to relationship selling, sales management, and customer relationship research, applied extensively in banking, insurance, healthcare, retail, and B2B contexts.

Response format

Likert (1–5, not at all characteristic of me to very characteristic of me)

Scale items

Customer Orientation — focusing on customer needs and long-term satisfaction (Likert 1–5, strongly disagree to strongly agree)

• I try to figure out what a customer needs.
• I try to achieve my sales goals by satisfying customers.
• I try to help customers achieve their goals.
• I try to find out what kind of product would be most helpful to a customer.
• I try to give customers an accurate picture of what a product will do for them.
• I only push products that I honestly believe will help customers.
• I try to achieve my sales goals by helping customers.
• I am willing to disagree with a customer in order to help them make a better decision.
• I try to bring a customer with a problem together with a product that helps solve the problem.
• I try to influence a customer by information rather than pressure.
• I offer the product of mine that is best suited to the customer's problem.
• I try to find out what the customer's needs are.
• A good salesperson has to have the customer's best interest in mind.
• I try to bring customers into the decision-making process.
• I try not to pressure customers to buy something they don't need.
• I try to help customers reach their goals.
• I try to think in terms of the customer's needs.
• I try to solve customer problems honestly even if it means recommending a competitor's product.

Selling Orientation — focusing on making the sale regardless of customer needs (Likert 1–5, reverse-scored for SOCO composite)

• I try to sell a customer all I can convince them to buy, even if I think it is more than they should buy.
• I try to persuade a customer to buy a product even if the customer thinks it is not right for them.
• I try to sell as much as I can rather than to satisfy a customer.
• I paint too rosy a picture of my products to make them sound as good as possible.
• I spend more time trying to persuade customers to buy than I do trying to discover their needs.
• I treat a customer as a rival.

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

Usage notes & scoring

Score as composite or report Customer Orientation subscale separately. Thomas, Soutar & Ryan (2001) JAMS 29(1) validated a 6-item short form. Customer orientation is the more theoretically meaningful subscale — predicts relationship quality more strongly than transactional satisfaction.

Recommended companion scales

Citation

Saxe, R., & Weitz, B.A. (1982). The SOCO scale: A measure of the customer orientation of salespeople. Journal of Marketing Research, 19(3), 343–351.

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