Browsing by Author "Jaakkola, Santeri"

Aim of the thesis was to find out how persuasion and influencing has been done in retail trades service counter. It is everyday life for men to do business in retail trade, but the subject is still relatively short on research. Persuasion and influencing has been studied, and from the field most relevant for this thesis has been Aristotle’s division of influencing to ethos, pathos and logos. Influencing with speaker’s status, feelings or knowledge is one of the most known division of persuasion and influencing. Behavior of salespersons in retail trade has been studied more and Kottlers, Armstrongs, Wongs and Saunders (2012) personal selling process was used in this thesis to clarify different phases of selling process. In the thesis will be canvassed, how persuasion is executed in service counter selling and what kind of measures salespersons use. For the thesis four salespersons from same retail trades meat- and fish counters were interviewed. Semi-structured interviews were executed for each separately and in the interview questions were about impressions of salespersons about persuasion and customer service. In the end of the interview, the interviewees were shown different customer profiles and pictures of meats, and tried to figure out salespersons argumentation tactics and reasons, why products are being sold and to whom. Received data was transcribed and analyzed in a way of subject analysis, meaning the data was divided to different subthemes, the themes were combined to classes and then from the results were analyzed all similarities and differences. Most significant finding from the perspective of persuasion was the salespersons usage of own rank and status (ethos) in persuasion. Interviewees also utilized impassioned persuasion (pathos) and this was often done with visualizing and associations. From the data also stood out a supportive meaning of relationship between customer and salespersons persuasion. This finding was important difference compared to other selling situations, because in retail trade salespersons have possibilities to build long-lasting relations to their customers. That is why it is interesting, that salespersons see relationship as important way of executing persuasion and influencing.