Impact of Purchase Importance and Salesperson Behaviors on Relationship Loyalty

Salespeople play a vital role in creating and maintaining buyer-seller relationships (Shepherd 1999). Salespeople are responsible for making initial contact, determining client needs, and identifying products or services to satisfy needs as well as providing follow-up support services (Pelham 2002). To make this happen, salespeople engage in certain behaviors to develop and nurture long term relationships with representatives of buying firms. These behaviors, which are categorized as relational and task, are especially vital in accounts that are very large, or for other reasons, considered important. These "major" accounts are often handled under a key account or global account framework (Wilson and Weilbaker 2004; Jones, Dixon, Chonko, and Cannon 2005).