Authors: Denis Bories
Salespeople play a key role in the formation of long-term buyer-seller relationships. One important mean by which the salesrep build the customer’s commitment to the seller is through cultivating customer’s trust in the salesrep. Although trust is recognized as a social process and develops progressively, our comprehension of the dynamics of trust is still limited. The purpose of this research is to advance the understanding of how social interactions between salesperson and customer influence trust formation over time. A survey conducted on 184 customers from a French electrical equipment distributor shows that the impact of social interactions on trust toward the salesperson varies across the relationship lifecycle. It also confirms that the influence of trust toward the salesperson and trust toward the supplier’s firm is not identical trough the relationship stages.
Journal: n.a. (n.a. – n.a.)
Web Address: n.a.
Publish Year: 2009
Conference: Marseille, France (2009)