Investigating sales approaches and gender in customer relationships John Andy Wood Department of Marketing, West Virginia University, Morgantown, West Virginia, USA Julie Johnson Department of Marketing, Western Carolina University, Cullowhee, North Carolina, USA, and James S. Boles and Hiram Barksdale Department of Marketing, Georgia State University, Atlanta, Georgia, USA Abstract Purpose – The purpose of this research is an examination of three different types of sales approaches (product-, solution- and provocation-based) on relational outcomes. The type of sales approach influences buyer’s assessments about the trustworthiness of the salesperson and the conflict with the salesperson. These outcomes of the sales approach affect the customer’s economic and non-economic satisfaction. Design/methodology/approach – Using cross-sectional survey data from a sample of 840 organizational buyers, a structural equation model measures the path coefficients of the proposed model and tests the differences in the magnitude based on gender. Findings – The results indicate that sales approaches will differentially influence assessments of trustworthiness and conflict. The magnitude of the influence of the sales approach on outcomes is different between genders. Originality/value – To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first empirical study to examine the impact of sales approaches on both genders of organizational buyers. Keywords Gender, Relationship marketing, Purchasing, Accounts management, Organizational buying behaviour, Sales Paper type Research paper An executive summary for managers and executive readers can be found at the end of this article. Selling tactics continue to evolve as economic fluctuations increase stress on existing relationships and the environment of the workplace transforms with the dramatic increase of female buyers. For instance, with less money available to spend, purchases are scrutinized more carefully and customer relationships have lost much of their power (Lay et al., 2009). Also, more and more often this scrutiny is being done by women, as they are projected to make up 50 percent of the workforce and 72 percent of these women will be in management, professional, or other related purchase- influencing positions (Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2009). It has been suggested that salespeople can no longer rely on status quo sales approaches, as traditional sales approaches will be evaluated differently by the emerging women buyers (Meyers-Levy and Maheswaran, 1991). Additionally, the current painful economic realities may increase the saliency of immediate tangible outcomes rather than rewarding efforts emphasizing relationship building (Lay et al., 2009). Surprisingly, these differential impacts of sales approaches on customer relationships are under-researched in the academic literature (Agnihotri et al., 2009). Evidence indicates that gender not only influences perceptions but also subsequently the judgments and evaluations of people in buying roles (Meyers-Levy and Sternthal, 1991). Researchers find that these gender differences influence the communication interactions between salespeople and buyers (McQuiston and Morris, 2009). Gender differences also can result in differences in marketing outcomes such as loyalty (Melnyk et al., 2009). Work in other areas of marketing also demonstrates that the gender of an evaluator leads to different assessments and outcomes (Boles et al., 2003). Addressing differences in buyer gender is important because women have become increasingly present in the workforce and now represent a major force in the global economy. One interesting trend in the business arena is that the number of women in the workforce is about to surpass the number of men, and this trend is expected to continue (Silverstein and Sayre, 2009). While the theoretical background on gender differences in decision-making goes back several decades, we maintain that this more recent expansion of women into decision-making roles makes a pragmatic argument for studying gender-specific assessments that are likely to influence buyer satisfaction in the buyer- seller relationship and ultimately the buyer’s expectation of relationship continuity. The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available at www.emeraldinsight.com/0885-8624.htm Journal of Business & Industrial Marketing 29/1 (2014) 11–23 q Emerald Group Publishing Limited [ISSN 0885-8624] [DOI 10.1108/JBIM-01-2012-0014] Received 28 January 2012 Revised 23 September 2012 Accepted 11 October 2012 11