Towards the Theory of Self Concept in Selling

Abstract

For fifteen years the dominant research paradigm in the personal selling and sales management literature has been the Walker, Churchill, and Ford (1977) model, Determinants of Salesperson’s Performance. This model is an adaptation of Vroom’s (1964) Expectancy Theory. The model has proved to be very effective in helping sales researchers frame many of their research questions. However, it has not proven to be able to explain a large proportion of variance in the important job outcomes of salespeople (Churchill, et al. 1985).