Research into the application of linguistic adaptation theory in personal selling communication

Abstract

—This is a qualitative study into the interactive communication between the salesperson and the potential customer in the process of personal selling based on Jef Verschueren’s linguistic Adaptation Theory. By carefully analyzing the obtained data, which are genuine face-to-face selling cases, the study found that the persuasive utterances made by the salesperson can be classified as the adaptation to one of the three worlds: physical world (including adaptation to stretches of time, to selling environment, to physical appearance and to non-verbal messages), social world (including adaptation to the business tradition of being honest and reliable, to the business rule of valuing time as well as to different ages and sexes), and mental world (including the need for benefit seeking, the need for rapport building, the desire for compliment and the desire for sympathy).