REWARD STRUCTURE AS A MODERATOR OF THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN EXTROVERSION AND SALES PERFORMANCE

The proposition that the relationship between extraversion and sales p erformance is moderated by reward structure was investigated. Specific hypotheses were tested with data obtained from 152 sales representati ves. One group of sales representatives was rewarded primarily for obt aining new sales and another primarily for retaining customers. Data p ooled across the 2 groups showed that extraversion did not correlate s ignificantly with either new sales or customer retention. However, mod erator analysis revealed that extraversion was positively associated w ith the dimension of performance that was explicitly rewarded but not with the nonrewarded dimension. A significant correlation between cons cientiousness and new sales, but not between conscientiousness and cus tomer retention, was found with the pooled data. As expected, relation ships between conscientiousness and sales performance were not moderat ed by reward structure.