 Who do I look at? Mutual gaze in triadic sales encountersAaron D. Arndt, Leila Khoshghadam and Kenneth Evans Journal of Business Research, 2020, vol. 111, issue C, 91-101 Abstract: Mutual gaze (i.e., eye contact) is linked to both positive outcomes such as trust and liking, and negative outcomes such as dominance and hostility. When selling to multiple people, salespeople must decide how to divide mutual gaze between customers. Too much or little time spent looking at a particular customer could reduce rapport. This research addresses two research questions: (1) Are salespeople more inclined to share mutual gaze with certain customers? And (2) What is the effect of mutual gaze focused primarily on one particular customer compared to sharing mutual gaze with both customers more equitably? Real sales encounters were analyzed and two follow-up experimental studies were conducted. The results show that salespeople tend to share mutual gaze with customers who are similar when first meeting, and those who speak more. Sharing mutual gaze equitably between customers when first meeting is typically more beneficial than focusing on a particular customer. Keywords: Gaze; Eye-contact; Nonverbal communication; Personal selling; Salesperson; Triadic (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:jbrese:v:111:y:2020:i:c:p:91-101 DOI: 10.1016/j.jbusres.2019.02.023 Access Statistics for this article Journal of Business Research is currently edited by A. G. Woodside More articles in Journal of Business Research from Elsevier |
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