Using MASEM to explore the psychological mechanisms linking salespeople's job satisfaction and performance

Abstract

Satisfied and involved salespeople not only benefit themselves but also contribute to the profitability of their sales organisation. However, no sales research focuses on salespeople's psychological states driving salesperson involvement to sales performance. This study classified salespeople's psychological states influencing sales performance by the objects related to salespeople and the motivational states. The three psychological states are salespeople's motivations for the salespeople themselves (intrinsic motivation), their organisation (organisational commitment) and their customers (customer orientation). In addition, no meta-analysis or empirical sales study has yet identified and clarified the interactions between the salespeople's three psychological states or shown how they mediate the link between salespeople's job satisfaction and performance. This study involved the collection of 141 empirical sales articles (1971–2022) from 26 journals and coded 275 effect sizes with 72,668 survey responses. Meta-analytic structural equational modelling (MASEM) was used to analyse the data and test the conceptual model. The results support the hypotheses: salespeople's job satisfaction is positively related to intrinsic motivation and organisational commitment; salespeople's intrinsic motivation is positively related to job performance, organisational commitment and customer orientation; salespeople's organisational commitment is positively related to job performance; salespeople's customer orientation is positively related to job performance. However, two are not supported: the hypothesis proposing a relationship between salespeople's job satisfaction and customer orientation, and that proposing a link between salespeople's organisational commitment and customer orientation. Based on the findings, a map of the salespeople's three psychological states is proposed, illustrating the link between salespeople's job satisfaction and performance, revealing the dominant role of salespeople's intrinsic motivation in driving the other two psychological states, and identifying the two-way causal relationship between salespeople's intrinsic motivation and job satisfaction. This study also offers marketing analytic professionals a clear roadmap for what the crucial variables are and marketing managers practical advice on how to promote and control the sales force.