The development and validation of the Customer's Perception of the Salesperson's Empathy (CPSE) Scale

Duleep Delpechitre, Purdue University

Abstract

The impact of the salesperson's empathetic ability has been researched over the years by many different researchers. Although many researchers have found that empathy has a positive effect on salesperson's performance and success, some researchers have found that empathy has no effect on sales outcomes. Many of these inconsistent findings have been attributed to methodological concerns such as poor conceptualization and measurement of the empathy construct. This dissertation consists of three studies. The first study developed a multi-dimensional empathy scale to measure customer's perception of the salesperson's empathy. The scale consists of two sub-scales. The cognitive sub-scale consists of 6 items and the affective sub-scale consists of 8 items. The second study examined the nomological validity of the two scales, which was able to establish nomological validity of the cognitive sub-scale but failed to establish nomological validity for the affective sub-scale. The third study examined the effect of empathy on three sales outcomes which were conceptually linked but were not tested. The findings on the study clearly showed that empathy should be conceptualized as a multi-dimensional construct as different dimensions of empathy effect sales outcomes differently. The Customer's Perception of the Salesperson's Empathy (CPSE) scale will enable researchers to examine the impact of empathy in sales outcomes.

Degree

Ph.D.

Advisors

Rutherford, Purdue University.

Subject Area

Marketing

COinS