Date of Award

Summer 2015

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Department

Marketing

Program/Concentration

Business Administration-Marketing

Committee Director

Anusorn Singhapakdi

Committee Member

Aaron Arndt

Committee Member

Lance Frazier

Abstract

This dissertation addresses how and what ethical expectations (prior to conducting business) affect customer trust of the salesperson. In order to do so, this dissertation achieves two things. First, a scale for measuring the consumer’s expectations of salesperson unethicality (CESU) is systematically developed and validated based on the existing ethics literature and previously developed scales. Second, the scale’s properties and potential application are examined through hypothesis testing regarding the effects of (1) word of mouth on brand equity and consumer’s expectations of unethicality, and the effects of (2) brand equity and consumer’s expectations of unethicality on trust of the salesperson. The result is a thoroughly validated scale that is useful to both researchers and managers in sales-oriented industries.

Such a scale can be used by sales-focused businesses to measure consumer expectations in order to help salespeople better understand the target market and allow managers to better focus ethics training efforts. The scale achieves this with an understanding of what the consumer expects from the salesperson, based on factors such as word of mouth and brand equity. Unlike other scales used to measure ethicality, potential unethical behaviors listed in the CESU scale are industry-specific.

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In Copyright. URI: http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/ This Item is protected by copyright and/or related rights. You are free to use this Item in any way that is permitted by the copyright and related rights legislation that applies to your use. For other uses you need to obtain permission from the rights-holder(s).

DOI

10.25777/qsce-3e67

ISBN

9781339109572

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