Dependent Variable

This chapter may be divided into two groups. The first part is based on variable description and definition, including risk tolerance, gender, and Sales Helping Behavior. The other group is about the correlations between these variables and logic of the paper. Please take notice that I will briefly state the hypotheses in the second part.

2.1 Variables description

2.1.1 Dependent Variable

2.1.1.1 Sales Helping Behavior

Variables in this study can be classified into two categories: independent and dependent. On the independent variable side, gender and risk tolerance are considered.

The dependent variable is hereby Sales Helping Behavior (SHB).Brief and Motowidlo (1986), identified 13 specific kinds of prosocial organizational behavior. Two of them are stated as follows: “providing services or products to consumer in organizationally inconsistent ways”; “helping consumers with personal matters unrelated to organizational services or products”. According to the authors, prosocial organizational behavior is a specific behavior that is expected to benefit a person. It is performed by individuals, groups, or organizations. George (1991) also mentioned that prosocial behaviors are helping behaviors; they are performed to benefit or help another individual. Moreover, there were two forms of prosocial behavior investigated (George, 1991):

1. Extrarole prosocial behavior: The concept is similar to Altruism and the items of this scale are like”suggest helping a specific other person with work-related problem”, “assists me with my duties” and “helps others when their work load increases.”

2. Role-prescribed prosocial behavior: It was defined as customer-service behavior, or prosocial behavior directed at customers. A sample item is “informs a customer of the important features of an item.”

As described above, SHB is one kind of prosocial organizational behavior. It mainly describes how salesmen or saleswomen help customers with product-unrelated problems. However, SHB is also similar to organizational citizen behavior. Wright (1996) mentioned in her dissertation that Organ (1988) expanded the taxonomy of organizational citizen behavior from two to five groups. One of the groups is altruism, which is a similar concept to SHB.

There are many factors influencing prosocial organizational behavior. Moods are usually mentioned among them. George (2000) said, “Moods and emotions play a central role in cognitive processes and behavior.” Piliavin and Charng (1990) also mentioned that a positive mood promotes helpfulness. “People in a good mood may perceive things in a more positive way and may increase positive cognitions” (Piliavin and Charng, 1990). As a result, they become more likely to perform acts associated with positive affect, such as helping behavior (Brief and Motowildo, 1986). Positive mood at work does support prosocial organizational behaviors and they are reciprocally related. Individuals who experienced positive moods at work were more likely to engage in both role-prescribed (customer service) and extrarole (altruism) forms of prosocial behavior (George, 1991).

However, do negative moods always decrease prosocial behavior? Clark and Isen (1982) say no and suggest that negative moods sometimes increase prosocial behavior.

Some scholars argued that helping others is sometimes seen as a way to evaluate one’s mood. Mainly unhappy people sometimes try to engage in prosocial behavior because it can make them feel better (Brief and Motowidlo, 1986; Baumann, Cialdini, &

Kenrick, 1981).

For example, when people are in positive moods their perceptions and evaluations are more likely to be favorable; they tend to remember more positive information. They are more self-assured, more likely to take credit for successes and avoid blame for failures, and are more helpful to others (George, 2000). Conversely, negative moods may foster derivative reasoning and more critical and comprehensive evaluations (George, 2000). In fact, George (1991) said that analysis of negative moods for prosocial behavior is still unclear and ambiguous. Since it can increase helpfulness, decrease helpfulness and be unrelated to helpfulness. A variety of explanations have been offered for these confusing results, which are reviewed by Carlson and Miller (1987).

There are some main points from preceding studies about SHB, such as:

1. There are several complementary explanations for why positive moods may facilitate salesperson helping behavior (George and Brief, 1992).

2. Being in a positive mood is likely to result in a salesperson perceiving customers, service and sales opportunities more positively than if the salesperson was not in a positive mood (George and Brief, 1992).

3. Positive moods recall positive material from memory (George, 1998). Recalling positive material from memory during a service encounter is likely to result in a salesperson having a more helpful, positive approach toward a customer and the provision of customer service.

Research has found that positive moods lead to people finding others more pleasant or appealing, and when a help giver finds another person pleasant or

attractive, he or she is more likely to provide help (George, 1998). Above the explanation, how can salespeople promote positive moods? It is suggested that positive moods may be fostered by promoting a sense of competence, achievement, and meaning in the work place. This may be accomplished by providing rewards and recognition, keeping work group or team size relatively small, and the leader’s having a positive mood.

The general helping decision process involves four sequential steps: perception of need Î motivation Î behavior Î consequence (Bendapudi, Singh, & Bendapudi, 1996). These variables are all concerned about the helping behavior; therefore, they are related to SHB. I will put more effort on discussing motivation, since motivation of helping behavior may be egoistic, altruistic, or both. For egoistic purpose, the first category is to gain rewards for helping or avoid punishment for not helping (Cialdini et al., 1987). Second, the motivation is egoistic when it results in helping because the ultimate goal is to reduce the donor’s personal distress. For altruistic motivation, the ultimate goal is enhancing the welfare of the needy (Bendapudi, Singh, & Bendapudi, 1996), even at the expense of a person’s own welfare. There is an altruistic motivation behind prosocial behavior when empathy is aroused (Piliavin and Charng, 1990).

The concept of Sales Helping Behavior is the same as altruism. Bar-Tal (1985-1986) notes that altruistic behavior includes following features: (a) must benefit another person, (b) must be performed voluntarily, (c) must be performed intentionally, (d) the benefit must be the goal itself, (e) must be performed without expecting any external reward. Organ (1988) also argues that the dimension of altruism includes “…all discretionary behaviors that have the effect of helping a specific other person with an organizationally relevant task or problem. Altruism is characterized as helping behavior, implying sensitivity, especially to one’s social environment” (Organ, 1988). All these features are related to SHB and will apply to

the questionnaire items. However, is there an altruistic personality? Piliavin et al.

(1990) summarized a few regularities as: people high in self-esteem, high in competence, high in internal locus of control, low in need for approval, and high on moral development appear to be more likely to engage in prosocial behaviors (Piliavin and Charng, 1990).

Bystander effect is the best known situational effect in helping behavior. It is caused by diffusion of responsibility. In other words, when an individual believes that there is someone who can offer help, pressure to help the needy person is reduced.

There is also an interesting phenomenon about helping behavior: a person receives more help when smiling. In other words, people provide more help when a stranger smiles all the times. In my opinion, I think if one gets help, others will think you are worthy to help. However, the one may get more help. Pleasant music and fragrant odor also has a positive effect on helping behavior.

There is one more variable that is important to helping behavior. It is trust (Jones, George, 1998). Customers tend to receive more help from salespeople who are worthy to trust.