Who Do I Look at? Mutual Gaze in Triadic Sales Encounters

摘要

Salespeople often sell to couples, groups and families;yet there is little guidance about how salespeople should divide attention between multiple customers in a single sales setting.One way customers evaluate attention is through mutual gaze, also known as shared eye-contact.Research in personal selling has shown that mutual gaze with a salesperson leads to increased believability.In psychology, mutual gaze has been linked to a large number of beneficial outcomes, such as competence and intelligence.However, too much gaze can also be construed as a sign of dominance.The purpose of this research is to evaluate the effect of salesperson gaze on customer evaluation of relationship building when selling to multiple customers simultaneously.Specifically, this research looks at the impact of(1)initial mutual gaze(i.e., who the salesperson shares mutual eye-contact with first)and(2)the amount of mutual gaze with the primary and secondary customers on customer evaluations of the salesperson.