Wearing your success on your sleeve: How salesperson luxury brand consumption affects consumers’ perceptions

Abstract

First impressions matter. Just as salespeople assess potential customers, consumers make judgments about salespeople, using cues from a salesperson's appearance and behavior to shape their expectations. In this research, we propose that a salesperson's personal display of luxury-branded products (e.g., wearing a Burberry scarf or driving a BMW) in a non-luxury retail setting is an unexplored but consequential cue that negatively frames consumers’ expectations of a pending negotiation. Across four studies, we demonstrate that, in business-to-consumer contexts, when a salesperson displays luxury-branded products, consumers reduce their expectations of receiving a favorable deal compared to when no luxury brands are displayed. Such expectations are problematic as they deter consumers from approaching salespeople, which can lead to lost sales for firms. Further, we find that the negative effect of luxury-branded products on deal expectations is sequentially mediated by consumers’ perceptions of salesperson materialism and moral character. Finally, we demonstrate that cues signaling the salesperson's customer orientation fail to negate the damaging effects of luxury-brand displays and may backfire depending on the signaler. As such, this research provides takeaways for salespeople who sell non-luxury products and offers important contributions to theory.