The Impact of Stigma: Negative Stereotypes of Salespeople

Academic Article Fall 2007 45(2001) to measure salespeople’s effortattribution measured the effort of salespeoplein this study.Performance (0.93): Sujan et al’s (1994)seven item performance scale reflectssalespeople’s evaluation of their attainment ofcompany objectives. It captures subjectivecomparisons of their performance withthat of colleagues’. Adaptations were madeto capture the automobile sales contextwith the final scale having the eight itemslisted in appendix 1.RESULTSAs anticipated, salespersons’ perceptions oftheir effort are positively related to theirself-reported performance. Regressingperformance on effort indicates supportfor hypothesis one as the beta coefficientof .178 is statistically significant at p