Effects of Advertising Campaign on the Salesperson’s Performance: Should a Multilevel Marketing Firm Advertise Its Brand to Customers?

Abstract

Purpose - The purpose of this study is to explore how advertising for multilevel marketing brands affect the salesperson’s activity including customer-salesperson interactivity, work attitude, and perceived and actual performance after the campaign. Research Design, data, and methodology - This study collects experimental data, survey data, and actual sales data and applies statistical analyses such as factor analysis, t-tests, and a structural equation model. Results - The results show that advertising campaign can enhance a salesperson’s selling activities and provide wide managerial implications to a multilevel marketing firm by filling the gaps for the field of advertising research. Conclusions - Managerial implications include: i) multilevel marketing firms should consider advertising campaigns as a means of changing customer responses because advertising plays a significant role in increasing familiarity with, and knowledge of, attitudes toward the brand, which also helps salespeople interact with customers; ii) multilevel marketing firms should consider brand advertising as a means to support the sales activities of salespeople including sales effectiveness, work attitudes, and perceived performance, and iii) multilevel marketing firms should consider brand advertising as a means to enhance a salesperson’s pride and motivation for selling their brand, which will lead to improved sales performances.