THESIS
2017
x, 106 pages : illustrations ; 30 cm
Abstract
Up-selling is an important sales technique in which a salesperson recommends a
higher-end product or additional accessories to increase profit. However, little is known
about the credibility of these sales messages and how they affect the effectiveness of such
upselling efforts. This thesis examines how the valence of sales messages (i.e., messages
that praise or denigrate a product’s quality) affect trust in the message; liking for the
salesperson and the success of up-selling attempts that follow.
Past research on the negativity effect shows that negative information is, in general,
weighted more than positive information because it is more diagnostic. However, the
current thesis shows asymmetries in this effect. In an up-selling context, consistent with
the prior literature,...[
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Up-selling is an important sales technique in which a salesperson recommends a
higher-end product or additional accessories to increase profit. However, little is known
about the credibility of these sales messages and how they affect the effectiveness of such
upselling efforts. This thesis examines how the valence of sales messages (i.e., messages
that praise or denigrate a product’s quality) affect trust in the message; liking for the
salesperson and the success of up-selling attempts that follow.
Past research on the negativity effect shows that negative information is, in general,
weighted more than positive information because it is more diagnostic. However, the
current thesis shows asymmetries in this effect. In an up-selling context, consistent with
the prior literature, negative information (versus positive information) about quality
increases trust in the message when it pertains to the relatively more expensive model. In
contrast, when the salesperson transmits positive (versus negative) quality information
about the cheaper model, the positive message is trusted more presumably because the
salesperson has less incentive to push the cheaper item. The thesis also finds that when
the unit margin difference between two models is small, the effect of message valence on
trust in the sales message is attenuated. This thesis further shows that the positive message
about the cheap model enhances the evaluations of the salesperson. The implication this
has for effective up-selling is then documented.
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