A situational analysis on how salespeople experience and cope with shame and embarrassment

Abstract

Abstract The goal of this article is to explore the role that shame and embarrassment play within an organization boundary‐spanning context. For a sample of 458 salespeople selling financial services, measures are developed and hypotheses are tested concerning the effects of shame and embarrassment. The results suggest that the tendency to experience shame and embarrassment in personal selling leads to protective reactions (e.g., avoidance behaviors), and these, in turn, negatively impact performance (e.g., sales volume and quality of sales interaction). Hypotheses are tested on fitting and validation samples, both for salespeople focusing on prospecting tasks and salespeople focusing on relationship building. © 2002 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.