The Moderating Role of Customer Orientation Experience on Salespersons' Attitude and Customer Patronage

Getting and keeping customers are usually tough jobs particularly in a competitive industry such as Smartphones and Accessories retailing. While salespersons' attitude has been fingered to either bolster or inhibit customer loyalty, learning to treat the customer as a king could be the game changer required to both improve the salesperson's attitude and capture customer loyalty. In this study the role of customer orientation experience in better understanding the relationships between salespersons attitude and customer loyalty is interrogated. To achieve the aim of the study, a survey research design was adopted. To generate data, copies of a structured questionnaire were randomly administered on 223 employees who serve as salespersons in the relevant retail outlets at the sampling site. For data analyses, a combination of SPSS (version 26) and Hayes (2022) process software were employed. While the descriptive statistics were done and presented in tables, frequencies and percentages, regression analysis was used for the inferential statistics. The study indicates the three dimensions of salesperson's attitude positively influenced customer patronage. Also, it was found that customer orientation moderated the relationship between a salesperson's attitude and customer patronage. Subsequently, it was recommended that business owners should ensure that those who serve as salespersons are properly trained on how to put up good listening and ethical attitudes as well as emotional intelligence in their dealings with customers as the preachment of customer orientation is to render kingly service to customers whose patronage is the sole rudder for the survival of a business.