Antecedents to Continuance Organizational Commitment Among Salespersons in the Retailing Services Industry

Salespersons play an important role in business transactions and serve as interfaces and bridges between firms and customers. This study attempts to explore the relationship between the two factors (salesperson demographics and leadership style) and continuance organizational commitment using salespersons in Taiwan’s retailing services industry as the population. In order to collect primary data for this study, the research questionnaire was distributed to the sample of 783 salespersons in twenty-three retail stores. Of the 783 salespersons contacted, a total of 426 completed questionnaires were used for this study. The usable response rate was 54 percent. The results of this study indicate that employee demographics (age and organizational tenure) and leader consideration have a significant positive relationship with continuance commitment, but that leader initiating structure does not. The results also show that educational level is not significantly correlated with continuance commitment, and that the differences in marital status result in different levels of continuance commitment.