Article

Ethical Behavior of Salesperson: The Impact of Consumer’s Perception on Trust, Satisfaction and Repeat Purchasing Behavior

Abstract

One of the essential factors for the purpose of maintaining businesses’ market shares is developing friendly, long-term relationships with the customer rather than short-term ones. One of the activities that best serves this purpose is actual sales. In particular, sales in the service sector are even more important. Since these services are abstract, customers need to trust the information presented to them by the salesperson. In this study, the evaluation of the behavior of salespeople in terms of ethics has been performed from the consumer’s perspective. The purpose of this study is to reveal the effects of salespeople’s ethical behavior in terms of consumer satisfaction with and trust in salespeople, consumer trust in the company, and finally consumer’s repeat purchasing behavior. In applications where buyer-seller relationships are quite extensive, the financial services sector has been assessed. Structural equation modeling was used to test the model and hypotheses of the research. In the results of the study, a stronger effect from ethical sales behavior appeared with confidence in the salesperson and confidence in the business. Additionally, salesperson’s ethical behavior (mediated by the business trust factor) was the most powerful predictor of repeat purchasing behavior.

Keywords

Ethics Business ethics Ethical sales behavior Salesperson’s ethical behavior