Competent or threatening? When looking like a “salesperson” is disadvantageous

Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services 47 (2019) 166–176

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Competent or threatening? When looking like a “salesperson” is disadvantageous

T

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Aaron D. Arndta, , Kenneth R. Evansb, Ziniya Zahedia, Emmyrose Khana a b

Old Dominion University, Strome College of Business, Department of Marketing, 2055 Constant Hall, Norfolk, VA 23529, United States Lamar University, 4400 S M L King Jr. Pkwy, Beaumont, TX 77710, United States

A R T I C LE I N FO

A B S T R A C T

Keywords: Salespeople Stereotyping Stereotype threat Dress Attire Race Gender

It is unclear why customers perceive some salespeople to be helpful and others to be threatening. Salesperson stereotypes are often considered negative and threatening; however, salesperson stereotypes may also be positive and professional. Based on the concepts of stereotype threat and compound stereotyping, this research proposes that customers form opinions about the threat posed by specific salespeople based on: (1) the extent to which they feel threatened by stereotypical salespeople in an industry, (i.e., stereotype threat), and then (2) the degree to which the salesperson's appearance matches customer stereotypes about salespeople for that industry. Salesperson stereotypes are viewed negatively when they elicit a stereotype threat in customers and viewed positively when they do not. This research investigates an alterable appearance characteristic, salesperson attire, and a fixed demographic characteristic, salesperson gender, using three experimental studies and a field study. When salespeople belong to a demographic that is considered threatening to a particular customer, they can wear less formal attire to avoid stereotype threat. When salespeople are not considered threatening, they should conform to salesperson stereotypes of professionalism.

1. Introduction Customers view salespeople either as a potential resource to help achieve their buying goals or as a potential threat (Kirmani and Campbell, 2004). The question is why do customers perceive some salespeople to be helpful and others to be threatening? Practitioners offer contradictory advice about adjusting appearance to set a positive first impression. One sales consultant recommends, “The fact that there's such a strong stereotype of salespeople means that you differentiate yourself by breaking the mold” (Ramsey, 2014). Nevertheless, the downside of differentiation is that typical salesperson attire also represents the norm of professionalism in the industry. Another consultant explains, “A businesslike appearance will get you farther than a superficially attractive one” (Connick, 2018). Thus, it is unclear which advice salespeople should follow. Should they try to avoid looking threatening by dressing differently or try to conform to the norms of professionalism in their industry? This research investigates the extent to which salesperson stereotypical appearance is advantageous/disadvantageous in the sales interaction. The answer may be explained in part by stereotype threat, which is the belief that others will make negative judgments about a person because of groups to which that person belongs (Spencer et al., 1999).

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Lee et al. (2011) demonstrated that customers are less likely to work with salespeople when they experience stereotype threat. For example, women are less likely to respond to ads from men in the financial services industry when negative math stereotypes about women are salient. However, Lee et al. (2011) limited their investigation to genderbased stereotypes in high threat contexts and did not examine any other aspect of salesperson appearance. In addition to demographics, many other salesperson appearance characteristics are salient to customers (Garber et al., 2013). The purpose of this research is to investigate whether individual salespeople can avoid stereotype threat by differentiating themselves from typical salespeople in an industry as envisioned by customers. For example, if customers imagine a “typical car salesperson” as a man wearing a shirt and tie, then male salespeople can appear less typical by wearing a polo shirt. According to compound stereotyping, stereotypes about individuals are seldom formed based on a single attribute (Schneider, 2005). Customers stereotype salespeople based on a combination of salient attributes such as context, gender, race, and appearance (Arndt et al., 2016). For example, Garber et al. (2015) contend that the combination of real estate agent age and attire are associated with trustworthiness. While some aspects of salesperson appearance are fixed (e.g., salesperson demographics), others can be altered (e.g., salesperson attire).

Corresponding author. E-mail addresses: [email protected] (A.D. Arndt), [email protected] (K.R. Evans), [email protected] (Z. Zahedi), [email protected] (E. Khan).

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jretconser.2018.11.012 Received 1 May 2018; Received in revised form 3 October 2018; Accepted 19 November 2018 0969-6989/ © 2018 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

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The implication is that even when the fixed aspects of a salesperson's appearance would typically elicit stereotype threat, he/she may be able to avoid stereotype threat by adjusting an alterable aspect of his/her appearance. Based on stereotype threat and compound stereotyping, the perception that a specific salesperson is helpful versus threating should be a two-step process: (1) the extent to which typical salespeople in an industry are viewed as threatening, and (2) the degree to which a specific individual salesperson varies from what is generally expected to be typical (often referred to as typicality). If customers are concerned about stereotype threat from typical salespeople in an industry, then looking like a stereotypical “salesperson” should increase the salience of the threat. If not, then salespeople should conform to the professional norms of their industry. According to the extant literature, salespeople are typically viewed negatively (Hartman, 2006) but we contend that this is only true when salespeople represent a stereotype threat. If salespeople are able to avoid triggering a stereotype threat, then customers are less likely to view them negatively. Furthermore, characteristics that are beneficial to salespeople in online profiles may inadvertently activate stereotype threat when social cues are salient, such as in face-to-face encounters. Researchers elicit stereotype threat from pictures and text using threat-activating social cues (Nguyen and Ryan, 2008). Without such cues, customers are unlikely to experience stereotype threat when viewing profile pictures. Consistent with compound stereotyping, we opine that it is also important to consider the combination of appearance characteristics and context. As such, this research investigates both face-to-face and online contexts, and also explores the effect of customer attire. After reviewing the background literature on compound stereotyping which serve to inform hypotheses about stereotype threat, this research begins with a pre-study that assesses the extent to which gender and attire contribute to “stereotypical” salesperson appearance. Then, Study 1 uses a between-subjects experimental design in a high stereotype threat context to investigate the negative effects of salesperson stereotypes in face-to-face interactions. Study 2 tests both negative and positive stereotyping in the same study by manipulating stereotype threat as high versus low. Study 3 shows that stereotype threat is minimized in online sales interactions. Finally, Study 4 uses a field study to show that stereotype threat also depends on customer attire.

(Arndt et al., 2016). In most cases, these studies show that individual stereotypes are seldom formed based on a single attribute. For example, research has shown interaction effects between race and gender (e.g., Jones et al., 1998), and between context and cosmetic features, such as tattoos and facial hair (e.g., Arndt et al., 2016). The findings in the sales literature are consistent with a larger body of research from psychology and sociology which empirically demonstrates that stereotypes are usually formed using a combination of observable attributes, called a compound stereotype (Schneider, 2005). When evaluating salespeople, customers use multiple sources of information, as evidenced by Garber et al. (2013). Research has found, for example, that black women are subject to different stereotypical inferences than black men (Stangor et al., 1992) and the bias against overweight women is stronger than against overweight men (Pingitore et al., 1994). Compound stereotyping explains the mixed evidence regarding the benefits of formal attire. A number of studies in sales and retailing have investigated whether it is beneficial to wear formal attire because it should enhance professionalism (e.g., Leigh and Summers, 2002; Wood et al., 2008; Yan et al., 2011). Yan and colleagues (2011) discovered that retail service providers were rated as being more competent when they dressed formally and Wood et al. (2008) showed that appropriate attire improved trustworthiness. In contrast, Leigh and Summers (2002) found that formal attire was detrimental compared to less formal attire and Sujan et al. (1986) found salespeople who wore typical attire for their industry were less persuasive than those who dressed atypically. A partial explanation of the contradictory results among these studies may be due to the various sales/study contexts. On the one hand, Yan et al. (2011) used drawings without backgrounds and facial characteristics and Wood (2006) used a written scenario instead of a picture. On the other hand, Sujan et al. (1986) and Leigh and Summers (2002) both included industry contexts. The divergence of results regarding attire is an example of why isolating the effect of a single observable characteristic (e.g., salesperson/customer gender, race, accent, attire, etc.) is likely to be misleading. Customers form compound stereotypes about salespeople based on a variety of factors; hence, the effect of any specific factor depends on the context of other salient factors. The perceptual map generated by Garber et al. (2015) shows that the combination of many appearance characteristics influences customer ratings of online profile pictures. Because it is highly complex to assess such a broad array of salient salesperson characteristics, we follow the recommendation of Babin and Babin (2001) by viewing customer schemas holistically rather than by isolating specific attributes. Thus, salesperson stereotyping should be evaluated using a combination of salient characteristics. However, customer reaction to a particular salesperson stereotypes also depends on their buying role identity.

2. Background 2.1. Compound stereotyping According to Willis and Todorov (2006), it only takes 100 ms to form a lasting first impression. Yet a customer's first impression of a salesperson has a lasting impact on the salesperson's performance (Evans et al., 2000). According to Fiske et al. (1987), people form opinions about others using two types of processes, category-based and attribute-based. The category-based process is when people form opinions about an individual using stereotypical information from a group or groups to which an individual can easily be matched. For example, when a salesperson looks like a typical salesperson, customers will form opinions about the salesperson based on their stereotypes about salespeople in general. When people cannot easily match an individual to a particular group, they form opinions of the individual based on that person's salient attributes and stereotypical judgments are reduced. Hence, if a salesperson did not look like a typical salesperson, customers would not apply their stereotypical judgments toward that individual salesperson. Sales researchers have investigated salesperson stereotyping based on a number of demographic and physical characteristics, such as race (Jones et al., 1998), gender (Dwyer et al., 1998; Jones et al., 1998; Lane and Crane, 2002; Swan et al., 1984), age (Dwyer et al., 1998; Perry et al., 1996), accent (Wang et al., 2013), dress (Leigh and Summers, 2002; Sujan et al., 1986), facial hair (Arndt et al., 2016), and tattoos

2.2. Buying role identity People maintain a variety of different roles and identities between which they alternate as a particular role or identity becomes salient (LeBoeuf et al., 2010). For example, a person who is both a father and a musician might emphasize father when he sees his children but switch to musician when he is in a professional music context. When people engage in a transaction, they assume a situational role as a “salesperson” or a “customer.” These situational identities are incorporated into the other multitude of identities a person possesses. Roccas and Brewer (2002) proposed four methods that people cope with competing aspects of self-identity: (1) the intersection of multiple identities to form a connected identity (e.g., female customer identity), (2) dominance in which one identify overpowers the others (e.g., customer identity), (3) compartmentalization in which different identities manifest at different times (e.g., customer identity unless the salesperson offends the individual's female identity), and (4) merger, in which multiple identities combine together to form a new identity (e.g., empowered shopper 167

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the salesperson.

identity). Stereotype threat implies that customers compartmentalize their identities. They are “customers” unless salespeople make them feel uncomfortable, in which case the threatened identity surfaces. This may explain why customers do not always prefer salespeople who have similar characteristics. According to the similarity-attraction effect, people prefer to associate with others whom they consider to be similar (Kleinbaum et al., 2011; Montoya et al., 2008). Researchers have called the similarity-attraction effect “one of the most robust theories in the social sciences” (Montoya et al., 2008, p. 64), yet sales and service researchers have found the similarity-attraction effect to be unreliable in customer service settings (e.g., Arndt et al., 2016; Jones et al., 1998; Dwyer et al., 1998). This discrepancy may be explained by social identity. It is only when a particular identity feels threatened that it surfaces. Similarity between the salesperson and customer lessens the stereotype threat, but it does not imply a similarity-attraction effect because the customer still has their “customer” identity activated. When Jones et al., (1998, p. 85) found that black salespeople tended to be rated more highly than white salespeople by white respondents, their initial reaction was how to interpret these results in the context of social desirability bias. They surmised that a possible interpretation might be that “perhaps society is more open to non-stereotypical salespeople.” In their study, which used actual pictures and included a study context (telecommunications), looking less like a “stereotypical” salesperson was more beneficial than any similarity-attraction effect triggered by race. This is consistent with Hartman (2006) who found that customers often have a negative stereotype about salespeople, in part, due to movies vilifying salespeople. Also, Babin et al. (1995) found that “stereotypical” car salespeople triggered feelings of skepticism and helplessness among respondents (who were undergraduates).

Further, whether or not a salesperson appears stereotypical is only salient in the event that the stereotype itself carries a negative connotation. If the salesperson does not look stereotypical, then customers will withhold their stereotypical opinions of salespeople from the individual salesperson and instead base their opinions more broadly on the individual's attributes. Hence, individual salespeople who do not appear stereotypical for their industry should be exempted from stereotype threat, but may suffer consequences of not appearing sufficiently professional. For example, a woman meeting with a financial planner who does not look typical (i.e., white, male, wearing formal attire, etc.) should be less likely to succumb to a perceived stereotype threat from that salesperson even though that may not be true of salespeople who were more stereotypical. When customers are not threatened by salespeople, they may view them as useful to attaining customer buying goals (Kirmani and Campbell, 2004). Customers are particularly receptive to salespeople who they perceived to be competent professionals (Newell et al., 2011; Jones et al., 1998; Rogers and Shoemaker, 1971; Sharma, 1990). Professionalism is impacted by appearance characteristics such as attire (Kwon and Farber, 1992; Leigh and Summers, 2002; Yan et al., 2011). However, Pilling and Eroglu (1994) unexpectedly found that professionalism only increases intention to work with a salesperson if that salesperson also demonstrates high empathy. Empathy is negatively associated with perceived threat (Stephan and Stephan, 2017); hence, stereotype threat may explain the unexpected interaction of professionalism and empathy on intention. We contend that exemplar salesperson stereotypes signify professionalism for the industry context. That is, professionalism is one aspect of looking stereotypical. Thus, looking like a stereotypical salesperson will be positive among customers when stereotype threat has not been triggered. As a consequence, if customers do not view stereotypical salespeople as a threat, then looking atypical would be detrimental for salespeople because salespeople would miss the opportunity to appear professional. Furthermore, when people act contrary to stereotypical expectations it often causes others to view them more negatively (Rudman and Fairchild, 2004). Hence, in low threat contexts salespeople who appear stereotypical benefit from professionalism and salespeople who do not look stereotypical are harmed by violating customer expectations.

3. Hypotheses development Stereotyping is a two-way process. People not only form stereotypes about others but also form beliefs about how others are stereotyping them in return. Stereotype threat has been shown in a number of societal contexts, such as women doing math (Spencer et al., 1999), African Americans on intelligence tests (Steele and Aronson, 1995) and people with low socioeconomic status on intelligence testing (Croizet and Claire, 1998). Lee et al. (2011) demonstrated that it also exists in the field of personal selling. Specifically, women feel less comfortable buying from men in certain industries, such as financial services and automobile sales, when their gender identity is salient (Lee et al., 2011) because they perceive they have been negatively stereotyped in these sales industries. However, when stereotype threat is based upon projections of salesperson versus customer characteristics, how typical salespeople are perceived should not automatically apply to all salespeople. Consistent with Fiske et al. (1987), we contend that customers form opinions about individual salespeople using a two-step process. First, customers form preconceived opinions about “typical” salespeople and whether those salespeople are likely to make negative judgements about the customer. When first meeting a specific salesperson, customers then draw upon their stereotypes about salespeople in general. When salespeople conform to customer expectations of “stereotypical” salespeople, they are more susceptible to stereotypes about them, including perceptions that they may hold biases against certain customers. Roccas and Brewer (2002) explain that threats to a particular self-identity will raise the salience of that threatened identity. When customers feel that a group of salespeople hold biases against them, it will raise the self-identity of the threatened group causing them to feel a stereotype threat. Thus, looking like a stereotypical salesperson will be counterproductive when customers believe typical salespeople to be a stereotype threat.

H2. When stereotype threat is low, looking like a stereotypical salesperson will have a positive impact on customer intention to use the salesperson. Stereotype threat is contingent on social context. Stereotype threat is induced as a result of people feeling judged by others (Steele et al., 2002). Because both real and imagined social presence influence consumer behaviors (Argo et al., 2005), researchers can prime stereotype threat outside of face-to-face contexts using social cues (Nguyen and Ryan, 2008). For example, Aronson et al. (1999) had participants read articles about how Asians were better at math than Caucasians and Lee et al. (2011) added mathematical symbols to a brochure to increase math stereotype threat among women. Without these primes, stereotype threat is naturally low outside of face-to-face contexts. Indeed, people often try to reduce stereotype threat by physically distancing themselves from threatening individuals (Goff et al., 2008). Whereas in face-to-face contexts, salespeople can elicit stereotype threat merely by appearing stereotypical, we opine that a stereotypical salesperson appearance is insufficient to trigger stereotype threat in online contexts. When social presence is removed (both real and imagined), people should prefer salespeople who conform to stereotypical professionalism. For example, even though a female customer might feel intimidated by a formally dressed salesman in a face-to-face meeting, she should view his formal attire positively in an online profile. Consequently, customers may react differently to salesperson attire based in

H1. When a stereotype threat is high, appearing as a stereotypical salesperson will have a negative impact on customer intention to use 168

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η2 = 0.094, p < .001) and gender (F(1,121) = 25.861, male mean = 4.50, female mean = 3.58, η2 = 0.180, p < .001) were significant. Thus, there is an additive effect—both attire and gender increase appearance of being perceived as stereotypical. The pre-study also assessed the extent to which people feel threatened by salespeople in general. Respondents were asked, “To what extent do you trust the following employees?” with anchors 1 = strongly mistrust to 7 = strongly trust. The jobs included medical doctor, account executive, restaurant server, insurance agent, salesperson, real estate agent, financial advisor, and loan officer. All of the positions except medical doctor (and arguably the restaurant server) are sales positions. However, the salesperson title was rated significantly lower than every other title, as shown in Table 1. Thus, even the title “salesperson” evokes mistrust. This is important because it means that customers may feel heightened anxiety around salespeople simply due to the role they perform.

online versus face-to-face contexts. H3. In an online context, looking like a stereotypical salesperson will have a positive impact on customer intention to use the salesperson, even among customers who typically experience stereotype threat. Stereotype threat also depends on social priming. One way that stereotype threat can be reduced is by blurring intergroup boundaries (Rosenthal and Crisp, 2006). Rydell et al. (2009) found that stereotype threat was reduced by activating a non-threatened identity. Stereotype threat should be less pronounce among customers when the boundary between salespeople and customers is smaller. The visual boundary between customer and salesperson in retail settings is often delineated by attire, with salespeople dressing more professionally than customers. Nevertheless, customers may dress formally, particularly if they are shopping after work. Formally attired customers should feel more comfortable meeting with salespeople and be less prone to perceiving stereotype threat. Conversely, when customers are dressed less formally, and stereotype threat is higher, customers should prefer salespeople who look less stereotypical, consistent with H1.

4.2. Overview of Studies 1–4 The four studies designed to investigate the hypotheses included: Study 1 which tested H1, Study 2 which tested H1 & H2, and Study 3 which tested H3, and Study which tested H4. Each of the studies was structured to investigate the following: Study 1 used a high stereotype threat context (a single female meeting with a financial planner); Study 2 manipulated stereotype threat by using either a female (high threat) or male (low threat) customer in financial planning; Study 3 tested stereotype threat using similar procedures as Study 2 in the online context; and Study 4 measured stereotype threat using customer attire. Furthermore, each study measured or manipulated the extent to which the salesperson appeared “stereotypical” based on the results of the prestudy. Specifically, demographic majority salespeople dressed in formal attire were considered exemplar “stereotypical” salespeople (given the sales context studied). Table 2 lists each study, the manipulations, and the findings for each of the hypotheses.

H4. When customers wear formal attire, looking like a stereotypical salesperson will have a positive impact on customer intention to use the salesperson, even among customers who typically experience stereotype threat. 4. Pre-Study and overview 4.1. Pre-Study The purpose of the pre-study is to evaluate the extent to which (A) certain salespeople look more “stereotypical” than others and (B) respondents feel threatened by salespeople. Two sets of salesperson pictures were used for the pre-study. The first set of pictures was of the salespeople appearing in Study 1 and the second set of pictures was of the salespeople appearing in Studies 2 and 3. The photographs are shown in Fig. 1. Respondents were not provided context other than “Customer service employee meeting with a customer: On this page you will be shown an employee meeting a customer in a face-to-face meeting. Please take a look at the picture and then answer the questions based on your first impression of the employee.” Hence, it is unclear to the respondents whether it is a male-dominant, female-dominant or gender neutral context. The purpose of using a neutral context was to compare the pictures based solely on internal schemas of what “stereotypical” salespeople look like. The extent to which a salesperson appeared to be stereotypical was measured using a single item, “This employee looks like a stereotypical salesperson,” with the anchors 1 = strongly disagree to 7 = strongly agree. Trustworthiness was measured using a single item scale, “This salesperson seems trustworthy,” with the anchors 1 = strongly disagree to 7 = strongly agree. The sample included 122 U.S. participants of a large online crowdsourcing marketplace [i.e., Mechanical Turk (MTurk)]. Respondents were screened to ensure that they were from the U.S., spoke English as their first language, and had maintained sufficient work quality on previous MTurk assignments. Respondents were paid $0.50 cents to complete the survey. The extent to which salespeople looked stereotypical was evaluated first. The data were analyzed using ANOVA. As shown in Fig. 2, the interaction between salesperson attire and gender for the first set of images was not significant (F(1,121) = 1.957, ns); however, both the effects for attire (F(1,121) = 6.84, less formal attire mean = 3.73, more formal attire mean = 4.52, η2 = 0.055, p < .01) and gender (F(1,121) = 11.98, male mean = 4.52, female mean = 3.60, η2 = 0.092, p < .01) were significant. Similarly, for the second set of images, the interaction between salesperson attire and gender was not significant (F (1,121) = .82, ns); however, both the effects for attire (F(1,121) = 12.27, less formal attire mean = 3.84, more formal attire mean = 4.82,

5. Study 1 Study 1 tests H1 using the same high stereotype threat context as Lee et al. (2011) (i.e., specifically, a single female customer meeting with a financial advisor). To ensure respondents would be sensitized to stereotype threat, a sample of female respondents watched a video of a young minority female customer meeting with either a white male or minority female salesperson for the first time. According to the prestudy, salesperson demographics and attire both contribute to appearing stereotypical. Consequently, the demographic majority salesperson dressed in formal attire would be anticipated to be the highest threat condition and have the lowest ratings. Thus, H1 would be supported if the white male salesperson dressed in formal attire was rated lower than the other conditions. 5.1. Methodology Videos were created that simulate approximately 45 s of a sales encounter in which a financial advisor met with a young minority female customer for the first time. The experiment used a 2 (salesperson attire: more vs. less formal) x 2 (salesperson demographic characteristics: similar vs. dissimilar) between-subjects design administered to U.S. participants of MTurk. Respondents were screened to ensure that they were from the U.S., spoke English as their first language, and had maintained sufficient work quality on previous MTurk assignments. Respondents were paid $0.50 cents to complete the survey. Female respondents were more likely to be sensitive to stereotype threat for the female customer so only data from female respondents were collected. A total of 91 female respondents watched the video and completed the survey, with a total of 79.1% identifying as white/Caucasian. The demographic majority salesperson was a white male in his 169

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Fig. 1. Study 1 photographs gender by attire.

Services of an Employment Agency to a Software Services Company: Establishing Rapport and Discovering Needs,” accompanying the Weitz et al. (2009) textbook. Our script was then adjusted to fit the industry context and focused on the salesperson's education and accreditation. As the length of an encounter has been shown to influence customer evaluations (Yeung and Soman, 2007), all recordings were designed to be comparable length (between 43 and 47 s long). Two variants of the dialogue scripts were developed, but because they had largely the same effect, the script type was included as a control variable. To control for the salesperson using the same tone in each video, respondents were asked to rate the advisor on his/her enthusiasm and whether the conversation seemed natural using a 7 point Likert scale where “Strongly agree” = 7 and “Strongly disagree” = 1. “The advisor was enthusiastic” was not significantly different between the male and female actor (male mean = 4.70, female mean = 4.57, ns). Similarly, “The conversation between the financial advisor and customer seemed natural” was also not significantly different (male mean = 4.48, female mean = 4.54, ns). Hence, it appears that the tone of the salespeople was well-matched. Intention to meet with the advisor was measured by a three item scale from Dodd, Monroe, and Grewal (1991) adapted to a service setting. The three items are, “I'd consider meeting with this advisor.” “I believe that this financial advisor could probably help me,” and “I would probably consider using this financial planner.” The Cronbach's alpha = 0.967. To rule out the competing explanation of the similarityattraction effect, similarity was measured using a five-item, seven-point scale by Feick and Higie (1992), including the items the advisor, “probably thinks like me,” “probably has ideas that are similar to mine,” “probably has a lot in common with me,” “probably shares my values,” and “probably treats people like I do.” The Cronbach's alpha = 0.925. Whether the respondent identified as white/Caucasian or not was also included as a control variable.

thirties and the demographic minority salesperson was an Asian female in her twenties. Photographs of the actors’ attire are shown in panel A of Fig. 1. The customer was represented as a female in her twenties wearing casual clothes. The typical attire for financial advising is highly formal. For the salesman, the more formal attire condition included a white collared shirt, suit pants, a solid blue tie, and glasses. The less formal attire condition was “business casual,” which consisted of a stripped polo shirt, khaki pants, and no glasses. For the saleswoman, the more and less formal outfits were chosen using the opinion of two female judges. The more formal outfit was a formal women's suit appropriate for a job interview. The less formal outfit was business casual and would not have been appropriate for a job interview. The quality of the manipulation was checked using a pretest of 272 respondents from an online panel. Respondents were shown a still photograph of a salesperson in one of the four conditions and asked to rate them on two scales. The first scale rated formality: “In your opinion, this financial planner is ______ for meeting with customers” (the anchors were 1 = underdressed to 7 = overdressed). The second scale rated expectation: “Compared to this planner, I expect financial planners to be dressed _______ when meeting with customers” (the anchors were 1 = “a lot less formally” to 7 = “a lot more formally”). The results for formality showed that there was no significant interaction between gender and attire (f = 1.27, ns) or for the main effect of gender (f = 0.018, ns) but there was a significant difference for attire (more formal mean = 3.89, less formal mean = 2.13, f = 221.69, p < .001). Similarly, the results for expectations showed that there was no significant interaction between gender and attire (f = 0.08, ns) or for the main effect of gender (f = 0.30, ns) but there was a significant difference for attire (more formal mean = 4.32, less formal mean = 5.87, f = 155.43, p < .001). Consequently, the attire manipulations appear to be effective. The script for the videos was written based on a video recording of a real sales call made to a first time customer, entitled “Selling the 170

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Pre-study: Face-to-face Sales attire

Stereotypical

6

Less formal More formal

5

4

3 Female

Male

Salesperson gender

Fig. 3. Study 1: Salesperson selling to a female customer.

Pre-study: Profile

5.2. Results and discussion

Sales attire

Stereotypical

6

The results were analyzed using ANOVA. The interaction between clothing and gender was significant (F(1, 90) = 10.99, η2 = .115, p < .001). As shown in Fig. 3, intention was significantly lower for the salesman when he was dressed more formally compared to the other conditions (more formal male attire mean = 3.95; less formal male attire mean = 5.56, more formal female attire = 5.41, less formal female attire = 4.82). Because the formally attired male salesperson was rated lowest, the findings demonstrate support for H1. To rule out the similarity-attraction effect, perceived similarity was tested as a mediating variable using the method suggested by Baron and Kenny (1986). The interaction between clothing and gender did have a significant impact on perceived similarity (F(1, 90) = 6.097, η2 = .066, p < .05). While perceived similarity did reduce the influence of the clothinggender interaction on intention somewhat ((F(1, 90) = 4.74, η2 = .053, p < .05), the effect is still significant and the nature of the interaction remains the same. These results rule out the similarity-attraction effect as an alternative explanation for stereotype threat. In high stereotype threat contexts, demographic majority salespeople are rated lower when they dress in formal attire because they conform to a threatening salesperson stereotype. However, when demographic majority salespeople dress less formally than customer expectations, they mitigate the negative impact of that stereotype threat.

Less formal More formal

5

4

3 Female

Male

Salesperson gender Fig. 2. Pre-study results. Table 1 Trustworthiness denoted by titles. Trustworthiness Title

μ

σ2

diff

Salesperson Doctor Server Financial advisor Account executive Real estate agent Loan officer Insurance agent

2.86 5.44 4.99 4.28 3.95 3.53 3.47 3.44

1.48 1.50 1.22 1.58 1.45 1.46 1.53 1.54

0.00 −2.58 −2.13 −1.42 −1.09 −0.67 −0.60 −0.58

6. Study 2

* * *

Study 2 tests H1 and H2 simultaneously by manipulating stereotype threat. In the high threat condition, a female customer meets with a male financial advisor. In the low threat condition, a male customer meets with a female financial advisor. Female customers are likely to experience stereotype threat when buying from a male salesperson but male customers are less likely to experience stereotype threat from a salesperson of either gender. Thus, H1 is tested when the female customer meets with the male salesperson, and H2 is tested when the male customer meets with the female salesperson.

* * * *

Diff = mean difference with salesperson. * p < .001.

Table 2 Study overview. Study

Design

Stereotype threat condition

Stereotype manipulation

Hypotheses tested

1

Experiment Experiment

Demographic majority (majority white male vs. minority Asian female) × attire (formal vs. informal) Gender (male vs. female) × attire (formal vs. informal)

H1 (Supported)

2 3 4

Experiment Field study

Single female customer meeting face to face in financial planning Manipulated using male customer (low threat) vs. female customer (high threat) Customer viewing online profiles Measured using customer dress formal (low threat) vs. informal (high threat)

Gender (male vs. female) × attire (formal vs. informal) Salesperson attire (formal vs. informal)

171

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6.1. Methodology Study 3 uses a 2 (gender customermale-SPfemale vs. customerfemaleSPmale) × 2 (salesperson attire: more or less formal) within-subjects design. The sample again consisted of U.S. participants of MTurk. Respondents were screened to ensure that they were from the U.S., spoke English as their first language, and had maintained sufficient work quality on previous MTurk assignments. Respondents were paid $0.50 cents to complete the survey. As with Study 1, only female respondents were used for data analysis because male respondents are less likely to be influenced by stereotype threat. There were a total of 226 completed female responses, with 77% identifying as white/ Caucasian. The same measure was used to measure intention as in Study 1 and the Cronbach's alpha was comparable = 0.960. An additional covariate of the respondent's experience meeting with a planner was added (previous experience: no = 0, yes = 1). Respondents were one of four pictures in which a salesperson was positioned next to a customer. The models used in the photographs for the male and female agents were matched as much as possible. They were both in their mid-thirties, Caucasian, blue-eyes, brown hair, similar height and facial features. Two pictures were taken of each salesperson in more or less formal attire. For the female actor, less formal attire consisted of a stylish knit shirt and more formal attire consisted of a full women's suit. For the male actor, less formal attire consisted of a long-sleeve dress shirt without a tie and more formal attire consisted of a full suit/sport coat and tie. The photographs were manipulated using software to use the same male and female heads in the more and less formal attire pictures in order to ensure that the facial expressions would be identical. Then the comparability all of four photographs were pretested using 47 U.S. participants of MTurk, who were paid $0.5 to participate. The respondents were randomly shown one of the four photographs and asked to rate it on six questions: “The agent is dressed appropriately,” “The agent's outfit is formal,” “The agent's clothing looks nice,” “The agent seems friendly,” “The agent appears to be in a good mood,” and “The agent seems enthusiastic.” (anchors 1 = strongly disagree to 7 = strongly agree). More formal attire was perceived as significantly more appropriate than less formal attire (high mean = 5.90, low = 3.65, p < .001) and appropriateness of attire was not found to be different by gender or by the interaction of visual cues and gender. Hence, more formal attire is perceived to be more appropriate for both salesmen and saleswomen. For the “outfit is formal” and “clothing looks nice” only the attire condition was significant (formal attire: high mean = 5.66, low = 2.34, p < .001; attractive: high mean = 5.48, low = 3.42, p < .001). None of the other questions differed significantly by condition. Thus, the more and less formal attire conditions elicit suitable responses, and the male and female models appear to be well-matched. The four photos are shown in Fig. 1 set B.

Fig. 4. Study 2 results: Stereotype rating in high versus low threat contexts.

7. Study 3 Study 3 tests H3 by having respondents rate salespeople for online profiles. In order for H3 to be supported, both male and female respondents should prefer salespeople who appear stereotypical, consisting of dressing in formal attire and being a demographic majority for the industry. 7.1. Methodology Online profiles were created for agents of each industry and respondents were asked to comment on the profile. The online profile consisted of written information and a photograph of an agent. The photograph was manipulated by gender (male vs. female) and by the attire of the agent (less formal vs. more formal dress). The same models from Study 2 were used in Study 3 (See Fig. 1 panel B). Respondents were shown either the male customer next to the female salesperson or the female customer next to the male salesperson. The salesperson's clothes were either more or less formal. The written portion of the profile was kept the same for all conditions and focused on salesperson expertise. The information was the same as in Study 1. The same measure was used to measure intention as in Study 2 and the Cronbach's alpha was comparable: Study 2 = 0.961. The sample consisted of U.S. participants of MTurk. Respondents were screened to ensure that they were from the U.S., spoke English as their first language, and had maintained sufficient work quality on previous MTurk assignments. Because H3 compares respondents who typically feel stereotype threat with those who do not, both male and female responses were used. Respondents were paid $0.50 cents to complete the survey. There were a total of 134 completed responses.

6.2. Results and discussion 7.2. Results and discussion As before, the results were analyzed using ANOVA. The interaction between salesperson-customer gender and salesperson clothing was significant (F(1, 221) = 4.01, η2 = .018, p < .05). Fig. 4 shows the impact of salesperson attire for each cross-gender dyad. For the high threat condition (the female customer and male salesperson), the salesman is rated higher when he wears less formal attire than when he wears more formal attire (salesman attire less formal = 5.62 vs. more formal = 5.09), supporting H1. In the low threat condition (the male customer and female salesperson), the saleswoman is rated lower when she wears less formal attire than when she wears more formal attire (saleswoman attire less formal = 5.05 vs. more formal = 5.24), supporting H2. Combined, this shows that looking like a stereotypical salesperson is negative when customers feel stereotype threat but positive when customers do not. Hence, salespeople are not always subject to negative stereotypes.

The data were analyzed using an ANOVA. The three-way interaction between respondent gender, salesperson gender and attire was not significant (F(1,148) = .008, η2 = .000, ns), indicating that male and female respondents did not feel differently about the salespeople (i.e., both felt low stereotype threat). The two-way interaction between salesperson gender and attire was significant (F(1,148) = 4.21, η2 = .028, p < .05). As shown in Fig. 5, both male and female respondents indicated the highest intention for the most stereotypical salesperson, the salesman dressed in formal attire (formal male attire mean = 5.42, less formal male attire mean = 4.27, formal female attire mean = 5.28, and less formal female attire mean = 5.01). Note that attire was significant at the 1% level (F(1,148) = 8.595, η2 = .057, p < .01), indicating that both genders benefited from more formal attire. This finding supports H3. 172

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Fig. 6. Study 4 Relationship building with couple.

Fig. 5. Study 3 (Interaction significant at 10% level).

8. Study 4

8.2. Results and discussion

8.1. Methodology

The results were analyzed using ANOVA. The interaction between customer attire (formal: higher vs. lower) and the salesperson attire (formal: higher vs. lower) was significant (F (82 1) = 4.19, η2 = .051, p < .05). The nature of the interaction is shown in Fig. 6. Customers who are dressed more formally (low threat condition) tend to perceive a stronger relationship development with salespeople who are dressed in a suit (salesperson suit mean = 5.43, no suit mean = 4.65) but customers who are dressed less formally tend have no preference for salesperson attire (salesperson suit mean = 5.11, no suit mean = 5.22). Hence, the results partially support H4. It is possible that the lack of threat among less formally attired customers was the result of two customers meeting with a single salesperson, perhaps giving customers the feeling of “strength in numbers.”

Study 4 uses a field study of real salespeople and customers to evaluate H4, which is how customer and salesperson attire impacts perceived relationship-building. The study involved multiple steps. First, real customer couples and practicing life-insurance agents took part in a simulated sales interaction. Then, they completed surveys about the interaction. Finally, the attire of the salesperson and male customer were coded as more or less formal. The sample consists of 116 life-insurance sales interactions taking place in a major city in the Southwest U.S. In the sales interaction, a practicing life insurance salesperson and a real-life married couple simulated a sales interaction. The encounter was simulated to control for product need and insurability. Realism checks show that the sales encounters were sufficiently realistic: 90% of customers and 81% of salespeople agreed that the study was quite realistic. The consumer couples were paid participants recruited from a national market research panel and the salespeople were primarily volunteers recruited from a trade association. All salespeople had some sales experience, and 53.4% had more than 5 years. There were only 12 female salespeople in the sample. Those data were removed to avoid confounding effects and the difficulty in analysis of such a small subsample. Additionally, several video-recordings had poor response or video quality and they were discarded, resulting in a final sample size of 85. Formal attire was coded as whether a salesman wore a full suit/ sport coat and slacks or not. Of the 85 salespeople, 48 wore a suit and 37 did not. A total of 62 salespeople wore ties. It is likely that the customer couple will dress at approximately the same level of formality so it was only necessary to rate one spouse's clothing. The husband's clothes were chosen because it is more easily compared to the salesman's clothes in expectation setting, and men's clothing is more standardized than women's clothes making the coding process somewhat less subjective. Customer clothes were considered formal if the husband wore a long-sleeve dress shirt or, if the sleeves were not visible, he had a formal sweater or suit jacket over a dress shirt. Of the 85 customers, 27 dressed more formally and 58 did not. A total of 7 customers wore ties. Additionally, some customers had been told that they could negotiate the price of the product and this was included as a control variable. Relationship building was measured using a seven-point, three-item scale consistent with Evans et al. (2000) including, “The agent is someone I could get along with as a friend,” “The agent did use the first meeting to get acquainted,” “The agent is someone with whom I can have a lasting, business-like relationship.” The husband and wife's trust were averaged together. The Intra-Class Correlation Coefficient was 0.745, indicating strong consistency of ratings. However, two values were missing, dropping the sample size to 83.

9. General discussion The findings of this study show that customers who feel stereotype threat from stereotypical salespeople prefer to work with salespeople who do not conform to salesperson stereotypes. Conversely, customers who feel little stereotype threat from stereotypical salespeople prefer salespeople who are exemplars for their industry. This research adds to the findings by Lee et al. (2011) by showing that salesperson appearance also influences perceived stereotype threat. Even when salespeople belong to demographic that typically elicits stereotype threat in a particular industry (e.g., being a white male in a car dealership), they are able to reduce threat by altering their appearance to be less stereotypical. Because stereotype threat is driven by anxiety (Lee et al., 2011), the findings in this research are parallel to the theory proposed and tested by Wan and Wyer (2015) that customers who experience anxiety feel uncomfortable working with service providers who cause discomfort (in their study anxiety was caused by highly attractive frontline employees). Hence, customer anxiety is a key factor for explaining the effect of service provider appearance on customer perceptions. These results have a number of implications for theory and practice. First, customers do not automatically have a negative stereotype of salespeople. The extant literature proposes that salespeople are generally viewed with a negatively valenced stereotype (Hartman, 2006). However, the results of this research demonstrate that salespeople are only viewed negatively when they trigger a stereotype threat in customers. The implication is that customer feelings toward salespeople may be more complex than previously conceptualized. We propose and find that customer characteristics interact with salesperson stereotypes. Previous sales research on salesperson stereotypes has either controlled for customer characteristics (e.g., Babin et al., 1995; Sujan et al., 1986) or applied the similarity-attraction effect to explain how customer 173

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characteristics impact salesperson stereotypes (e.g., Jones et al., 1998; Dwyer et al., 1998). Unfortunately, research on the similarity-attraction effect in personal selling has found inconsistent or little support (Dwyer et al., 1998; Jones et al., 1998). We propose that customer anxiety, derived possibly from a stereotype threat, is a more reliable method for understanding how customer characteristics affect salesperson stereotypes. Customers not only consider a salesperson's trustworthiness but also how that salesperson manages the exchange context. Even though a particular customer may be naturally defensive towards “stereotypical” salespeople in general, he/she may be open to working with a particular salesperson that induces a comfortable exchange dynamic. We caution researchers against using overly broad generalizations, such as “women are threatened by male salesmen,” because stereotype threats appear to be more likely to be activated in certain industry contexts (e.g., financial planning), under certain conditions (face-toface encounters), if a specific salesperson appears to look stereotypical, and when customers do not feel empowered via dress or social support. Customer anxiety should be used as a rule for understanding whether stereotypical salespeople are likely to be viewed negatively in a given context and, then, whether a particular salesperson appears stereotypical. These findings also have implications for advancing our understanding of the Persuasion Knowledge Model (PKM). According to the PKM, people actively evaluate persuasive attempts using topic knowledge, persuasive knowledge, and knowledge of the agent (Friestad and Wright, 1994). Using the stereotyping literature, we show that knowledge of the agent is formed in a two-stage process. First, customers form stereotypical perceptions of agents in a particular context. Second, when they meet an actual agent they compare the agent to that stereotypical ideal to form an early impression of the agent. Hence, the extent to which customers form negative early impressions of a particular salesperson depends on the valence of their stereotypical view of salespeople in the context, and how much the particular salesperson matches that stereotype. When customers view stereotypical salespeople as a threat, then it is beneficial to display counterstereotypical characteristics. If customers are prone to viewing stereotypical salespeople as facilitators of their buying goals, then it is beneficial to appear stereotypical. Another contribution is to reconcile the contradictory findings about formal attire. As anticipated, the apparent inconsistency between the positive findings (Yan et al., 2011; Wood, 2006) and negative findings (Leigh and Summers, 2002; Sujan et al., 1986) may have been caused by study context. Stereotype threat does not exist in studies that omit social cues, especially outside of face-to-face contexts; consequently, formal attire is beneficial. On the other hand, the video procedure used by Leigh and Summers (2002) was oriented from the perspective of the buyer to make the viewer feel as though they were the buyer; hence, the experimental manipulation may have exerted a greater influence than in the case of context-free written and/or visual depictions. Our research suggests that the design characteristics may have triggered anxiety in a large percentage of respondents. The Sujan et al. (1986) study also included context, a salesman selling either men's suits or computers, which impacted the interpretation of salesperson attire. The study findings also have implications for the design of future experiments about stereotyping. Isolating the effect of a particular manipulation is usually considered to be a best practice in ensuring the internal validity of a study design. However, the findings of this research demonstrate that removing context entirely in order to isolate the impact of stereotypical traits will often lead to highly misleading results. Consistent with the principles of compound stereotyping, people use multiple salient observable traits to form stereotypes for individuals (Schneider, 2005). Salesperson attire, for example, may have a positive or negative effect depending on the industry context or stereotype threat to the customer. Consequently, we argue that studies of stereotypical traits should account for four aspects of context: (1)

Fig. 7. Attire decision-tree.

salesperson appearance, (2) industry expectations, (3) social cues, and (4) customer anxiety. Our suggestion is consistent with Morales et al. (2017) who opine the experiments should be as realistic as possible to truly understand consumer behavior. 9.1. Practical implications Our results reconcile the contradictory advice to dress professionally (Connick, 2018) and “differentiate yourself by breaking the mold” (Ramsey, 2014). Salespeople cannot influence the extent to which they belong to a demographic majority, or not, but they can influence their appearance through dress and other physical props. When customers are likely to feel anxiety—such as when a customer feels threatened by typical salespeople or feels vulnerable—salespeople should “dress to disarm.” Conversely, in contexts where stereotype threat is low, salespeople should dress professionally. For online profiles, salespeople should wear formal attire and avoid social cues that elicit stereotype threat. For face-to-face meetings, salespeople should wear formal attire when meeting with demographic majority customers or with customers who are also dressed formally. Fig. 7 provides a decision-tree for attire choice. Although it is a small part of the study, it is also worth pointing out that customers tend to be biased against salespeople in general. Even having the title “salesperson” elicits mistrust in many customers. Hence, managers can somewhat reduce customer anxiety simply by providing the sales force with an alternative title. This is frequently done throughout the sales profession and appears to remain a relevant practice given the pervasiveness of consumer's negative disposition to the title of “salesperson.” 9.2. Limitations and directions for future research This research has a number of limitations that provide directions for future research. First, this research focuses on the relationship between 174

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attire and conformity to a typical salesperson stereotype, rather than testing the efficacy of specific attire choices. Unusual attire choices might be considered very formal but also counterstereotypical. Similarly, we limited the range of attire to typical retail salesperson choices. We did not investigate unusually formal attire (e.g., tuxedos or ballroom gowns) or attire less formal than business casual. Anecdotal evidence suggests that there is an acceptable range of attire that varies by industry and future research should investigate this issue further. Furthermore, the range of industries used in this research is limited to professional retail selling. Although the findings of this research should hold in most retail and business-to-business contexts, formal attire may be impractical for on-site construction/industrial/agricultural contexts and the norms for professional attire will likely be different. Additionally, this research did not directly investigate customer anxiety, which is the psychological mechanism underlying stereotype threat. There are a variety of other situations that could induce customer anxiety besides stereotype threat, such as service failure, an unpleasant retail store atmosphere, nervousness about a particular buying situation, or anxiety produced by other customers (for example, trying to impress friends or relatives). Customer anxiety needs to be directly measured and evaluated. In addition, researchers could study the impact of trait anxiety and other customer personality traits on sales stereotypes. Customers who experience social anxiety might feel uncomfortable around salespeople generally. How the salesperson/service provider conveys that initial impression in moments of uncomfortable/ uncertain purchase contexts and/or service crisis can have a dramatic effect on the future progression of the exchange encounter. Another avenue for future research is to understand alternative stereotypes. In some sales situations, there could be multiple versions of a stereotypical salesperson. For instance, fashion sales may have different stereotypes for different clothing styles and up-scale versions of products. The two-step model developed in this research should still apply but having multiple referent prototypical exemplars should complicate the process and might elicit unexpected results. Finally, the online profiles used in this research did not contain social cues that would have elicited stereotype threat. Future research should investigate whether certain social cues trigger stereotype threat in online profiles.

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