A self-determination theory-based meta-analysis on the differential effects of intrinsic and extrinsic motivation on salesperson performance

Valerie Good (), Douglas E. Hughes (), Ahmet H. Kirca () and Sean McGrath ()
Additional contact information
Valerie Good: Seidman College of Business, Grand Valley State University
Douglas E. Hughes: Muma College of Business, University of South Florida
Ahmet H. Kirca: Michigan State University
Sean McGrath: Michigan State University

Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, 2022, vol. 50, issue 3, No 9, 586-614

Abstract: Abstract While companies devote extensive resources to sales force monitoring and compensation, executives continue to puzzle over how to properly motivate their sales personnel to perform more effectively and efficiently. Which matters more for performance—extrinsic incentives or intrinsic motivators—and under what conditions? While motivation has been studied for decades, the phenomenon remains a chief concern facing many organizations today. Findings from 293 effect sizes nested within 127 studies (n = 77,560) demonstrate that motivation is significantly associated with salesperson performance (r = .245, 95% CI = .238 to .252). In addition, the meta-analytic findings indicate that intrinsic motivation is more significantly associated with performance (r = .298, 95% CI = .287 to .308) than extrinsic motivation (r = .176, 95% CI = .166 to .186). The multivariate analyses also confirm that intrinsic motivation has stronger effects than extrinsic motivation on salesperson performance after controlling for sample characteristics such as age, gender, and tenure. Moreover, we find that the relationship between intrinsic motivation and performance is greater than that of extrinsic motivation and performance for both younger and older salespeople, salespeople with longer job tenure and years of sales experience, female salespeople, salespeople selling in a B2B context, and salespeople located within the U.S. We discuss the theoretical importance of these findings, offer practical implications for sales managers, and suggest avenues for future scholarly research.

Keywords: Intrinsic motivation; Extrinsic motivation; Personal selling; Sales management; Meta-analysis (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s11747-021-00827-6 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:joamsc:v:50:y:2022:i:3:d:10.1007_s11747-021-00827-6

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.springer ... gement/journal/11747

DOI: 10.1007/s11747-021-00827-6

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science is currently edited by John Hulland, Anne Hoekman and Mark Houston

More articles in Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().