The 30-Second-Sale: Snap impressions of a retail sales person influence consumers’ decision making. The 30-Second-Sale: Snap impressions of a retail sales person influence consumers’ decision making.

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The 30-Second-Sale: Snap impressions of a retail sales person
influence consumers decision making
Jürg Hari & Michael Stros & John Marriott
Abstract
First impressions and judgements about other people may be formed very
quickly and often unwittingly and may also be long-lasting. These judgments (in
its content-filtered form called thin-slices) affect consumer decision making
when interacting with a sales person. Thin-slice judgments are very accurate in
predicting the outcome of human interactions.
The present study uses this thin-slice methodology to examine the influence
of different sales people and different gestures on the sales outcome. As outcome
measures, the parameter “intention to buy” was used. Real sales people in their
daily real-world sales setting and actual customers from the target group were
used for this study.
The experiment demonstrates that the rating of a sales situation is indicative
of the intention to buy the product. The results show a positive correlation
between the primary variables “interpersonal” and “task-oriented” and the sec-
ondary variable “intention to buy”. The interpersonal variable in particular, was
a highly significant predictor of the outcome.
In addition, the rating on the ‘’anxious’’ parameter – also a strong interper-
sonal signal – correlated highly with the outcome. The more cognitive, task-
oriented variable demonstrated a weaker relationship to the stated intention to
buy and barely reached statistical significance. This confirms previous results
that sales encounters are a strongly emotional event.
1 Introduction
The importance of first impressions in daily life is common knowledge. Quite
often, a first glance is sufficient to judge a person or a situation. This first im-
pression is the basis for further judgements. Judgements about other people are
often formed very quickly and inadvertently and may also be lasting. They can
even influence the decision as to which person we are going to sit next to in the
train, or what candidate will be employed after a job interview or what person
we are going to marry and spend the rest of our life with.

54 Jürg Hari & Michael Stros & John Marriott
Such judgments will also affect consumer decision making when interacting
with a sales person. In general, the interaction between a service employee or a
sales person with a customer is considered to have a big impact on the cus-
tomer’s assessment of the service quality and the assessment of the relationship
(Gwinner 1998). For the retail industry in general and the pharmacy retailing
businesses in particular, it is of interest to have a more in-depth view of the un-
derlying mechanisms.
A customer will judge a retail sales person immediately and form an opin-
ion of him or her within a surprisingly short period of time. Slices of six to thirty
seconds may suffice to form a judgment. Even more surprising is that this judg-
ment is independent of the actual spoken content of the interaction. Such con-
tent-filtered pieces of human interaction are termed “thin-slices” (Ambady
1993). The authors define a thin-slice as a capture of a dynamic sequence of
human communicative behaviour not longer than five minutes in duration. These
thin-slice judgments may be good predictors of a sales outcome and may influ-
ence customers’ decision making. This research will therefore focus on these
judgements and further validate the research methodology. This article reviews
some recent work on thin slices, presents a study involving sales people in a
pharmacy setting and suggests research on how the methodology could be ap-
plied to further explore sales person to customer interactions.
2 Relevant Literature
Thin-slice judgments are very accurate in predicting the outcome of human in-
teractions. Several studies of professors and their students showed that thin-
slices are good predictors of end-of-term students’ evaluation of their teaching
(Ambady 1993). Nine female undergraduate students unfamiliar with the respec-
tive professor rated silent video clips (with a duration of 30 seconds) of these
professors in class. These half minute video clips allowed complete strangers to
assess quite accurately the rating of the teacher by students who interacted with
them over a full semester.
Similarly, thin-slices of interactions between a patient and a doctor were
good predictors of the malpractice history of that particular doctor (Ambady
2002). Again undergraduate students rated the doctors on different emotional
and other variables. The ratings including evaluations of the tone of voice,
clearly correlated with previous malpractice claims. This study showed that
doctors by means of unconscious and minimal cues obviously communicated a
wealth of information.

The 30-Second-Sale 55
Further, thin-slices of discussions between married couples correlated highly
with the actual divorce rate (Ambady 2000). In combination, all of these studies
suggest that content-cleared, short 30-second pieces of human interactions will
be enough to largely determine the outcome of any interaction, in this case a
sales interaction.
The sales person plays an important role within the selling process of pre-
scription and non-prescription drugs. The aspect of the sales person’s personality
has a major impact on the success of sales. The relevance of a sales person’s
perception to their sales success has been investigated by Ambady (2006). It was
shown that thin-slice judgments about sales people are accurate predictors of
sales effectiveness. Independent observers judged 30 second thin-slices of inter-
views with the sales person on a variety of parameters such as anxiety, analytical
behaviour and emotion. Those ratings correlated highly with the actual sales
effectiveness as judged by the sales person’s superior.
The methodology of thin-slice judgements is based on the fundamental idea
that a first glance is sufficient to make a final judgement. Even more sur-
prisingly, even without taking the verbal content into consideration, a short im-
pression gives sufficient information to make a decision. It is proposed that the
information gleaned from a first glance can be defined from a range of expres-
sions such as: expressive body language (gestures), facial expression, voice and
body movements (Ambady 2000). According to Ambady (2006, 8) “for an ob-
server, ratings can be divided into three dimensions (a) interpersonal qualities,
such as sociability or extroversion, (b) task-oriented qualities, such as intelli-
gence and perseverance and (c) anxiety.” As already emphasized, the actual
content of a conversation is in this case irrelevant.
The model of non-verbal communication is the theoretical fundamental of
the thin-slice judgements methodology. Non-verbal communication is a basic
component of interhuman communication. According to Bekmeier (1989, 22)
non-verbal communication can be distinguished between the following charac-
teristics (see table 1).
Transmitter Example Receiver
Optical channel Facial expressions, gestures,
body language
Visual channel (vision)
Acoustic channel Variation of the vocal
frequency
Hearing channel (hearing
sense)
Kinetic channel Skin contact Tactile channel (touch)
Body odour Smelling sense Chemical channel
Taste Taste channel
Thermal channel Body heat Temperature sense
Table 1: Information channels (Bekmeier 1989, 22)

56 Jürg Hari & Michael Stros & John Marriott
It should also be added that non-verbal communication, expressed by our be-
haviour, cannot easily be influenced or suppressed. Therefore, the information
gathered from non-verbal communication can be considered to be genuine and
(though perhaps surprisingly) accurate (DePaulo 1992).
The effectiveness and relevance of thin-slice judgements in a practical ap-
proach has been shown by scientific research (Ambady 1993; Ambady 2000;
Ambady 2002; Gladwell 2005). Leigh (2002) has also shown that consumers’
non-verbal behaviour does have a clearly significant impact on the sales
effectiveness of a sales person.
3 Problem Statement and Study Objectives
For our study we picked a product new to the Swiss market: A shampoo with an
ingredient reducing hair loss in postmenopausal women sold in pharmacies and
other specialty sales channels. Due to its medical claim, its unique mode of ac-
tion and its rather high price compared to similar products, the sales situation
will typically involve a comparatively elaborate sales discussion. The customer
needs to be informed about the product’s properties, application, ingredients and
possible side effects. Consequently, the retail person, in this case the pharmacist,
plays an important role in the sales process.
In addition, this study aimed at replicating previous findings and methodo-
logical approaches. Finally, the study includes parameters closer to the actual
sales situation in the field (judgements from real customers and their intention to
buy).
As a non-verbal manipulation we picked the parameter “gesture” as variable
(see table 1 above).
3.1 Proposed Model
Based upon the prior findings, the resulting model of the sales process of non-
prescriptive drugs (figure 1) was proposed.

The 30-Second-Sale 57
Figure 1: Non-prescription drugs sales process model
3.2 Hypotheses
This study was derived from the previously described findings, building upon
the following hypotheses:
 H1: Sales people differ regarding affective measurements
 H2: The affective profile of a sales person influences the purchase intent
 H3: The gestures of the sales person has an influence on purchase intentions
 H4: Interpersonal and task-oriented qualities have an effect on purchase intentions
 H5: Anxiety has a negative effect on purchase intentions
3.3 Definitions of Variables
For this study, the following variables were defined:
 gestures (with and without gestures)
 person
 interpersonal; contained nine variables: collaborative, cooperative, emotional, empathic,
enthusiastic, perceptive, understanding, supportive, warm
 task-oriented; contained nine variables: achieving, analytical, confident, decisive, directive,
influential, persevering, professional, self-controlled
 anxious
 intention to buy (“Would you purchase the product?”)

58 Jürg Hari & Michael Stros & John Marriott
4 Stimulus Preparation
The aim of this research project was to investigate the effect and relevance of
thin-slice judgements in a pharmaceutical sales environment. The experimental
set-up was based on Ambady’s (2006) survey. The object used was a non-
prescriptive hair treatment product, which reduces hair-loss in middle aged
women. For the planned study, a retail pharmacy seemed to be the ideal envi-
ronment. Therefore, a pharmacy in Winterthur, Switzerland, was chosen. Two
different pharmacist saleswomen were videotaped in their retail pharmacy during
a sales interaction with a mock customer (hardly visible to the observer). The
saleswomen were asked to use gestures or hold the product package (no gestures
at all).
4.1 Video Production
Because of the dynamic nature of thin-slice judgments, only short video se-
quences can be applied in an experimental set-up. Static photographic pictures
are not applicable.
In total four short videos with an "actor-customer" and with two female
sales people were recruited for this experiment. In consequence, four different
videos having the properties shown in table 2 were produced. Each video had an
original length of about 5 minutes.
Pharmacist A Pharmacist B
Gesture + Video 1 (A+) Video 2 (B+)
Gesture - Video 3 (A-) Video 4 (B-)
Table 2: Video characteristics
Each of these short videos contains three randomly selected ten seconds se-
quences, which were later combined with to sequences with a duration of thirty
seconds.
 The first sequence represents the welcome part of the interaction
 The second sequence shows the sales pitch with the product presentation and application of
information
 The third sequence includes the final phase of the sales call including the actual payment
The pharmacists were instructed to talk once with and once without gestures.
Thereafter, the tone of these videos was altered by removing all frequencies
above approximately 400 Hz, depending on the actual voice of the sales person.

The 30-Second-Sale 59
As a result, the spoken words were not understandable following frequency
modification (content-cleared).
4.2 Outcome Measures
The videos were presented to a total of 80 middle aged women. To ensure the
opinions be as unbiased as possible, the study participants were not previously
informed as to the purpose and set-up of this study. Only the product was pre-
sented and sales material handed out before the start. The group was divided into
four sub-groups, each of 20 participants. Two videos (see table 3) were presented
to the participants in a randomised, cross-over design (similar to Ambady 1993).
Group 1 A+ B-
Group 2 B+ A-
Group 3 B- A+
Group 4 A- B+
Table 3: Video assignments
Finally, immediately after the video sequence was shown, the participants were
asked for their opinion on the sales situations. For this study, the Ambady (2006,
9) questionnaire (figure 2) was used. The evaluations criteria had to be rated on a
Likert scale (Likert 1993) ranging from 1 to 7 (1 strongly disagree, 7 fully
agree). This questionnaire used 20 questions and was handed out to the study
participants in German language. They were instructed to answer the questions
quickly and spontaneously. The questionnaire was collected afterwards.
For the statistical analysis the results of groups 1 and 3 were combined into
one group and the results from of groups 2 and 4 into a second group. Further the
individual items were combined into the composite variables “interpersonal”,
“task-oriented” and ‘’anxious’’. 5 excluded.

60 Jürg Hari & Michael Stros & John Marriott
Video #: _________
Date: _________
What is your personal impressions of the retail person?
(1 strongly disagree, 4 neutral, 7 fully agree).
1. Achievement-oriented
2. Analytical
3. Anxious
4. Collaborative
5. Confident
6. Cooperative
7. Decisive
8. Directive
9. Emotional
10. Empathic
11. Enthusiastic
12. Influential
13. Persevering
14. Professional
15. Self-controlled
16. Self-perceptive
17. Supportive
18. Understanding
19. Warm
20. Would you purchase the product?
1 2 3 4 5 6 7
Figure 2: Questionnaire (Ambady 2006)
5 Evaluations of Data
For the evaluation of data, the coded answers of the 80 returned questionnaires
were entered into SPSS. The quality of the data was assessed, an analysis of
variance (ANOVA) and a regression analysis performed.
Tables 4 to 6 show the mean values and the standard deviation of inde-
pendent variables (interpersonal, task-oriented and anxious). These variables also
represent the affective measurements from hypothesis 1.
Saleswoman A rated high on the variable “interpersonal” (6.18 r 1.05)
using gestures and rated lower, while not using gestures (5.03 r 1.16). For the
saleswoman B the opposite was true: “interpersonal” using gesture resulted in
lower rating (4.99 r 1.19) versus “interpersonal” and no gestures with a higher

The 30-Second-Sale 61
Woman Gesture Mean Standard-
deviation N
+ 6.18 1.05 18
- 5.03 1.16 20
A
Total 5.57 1.24 38
+ 4.99 1.19 19
- 5.70 1.21 18
B
Total 5.33 1.24 37
+ 5.57 1.26 37
- 5.35 1.22 38
Total
Total 5.45 1.24 75
rating (5.70 r 1.21). An analysis of variance was conducted on the data set with
the woman (F(1,71) = 0.948; p>0.333) and gesture (F = 0.683; p>0.411)
showing no statistical significant influence but with the interaction term
(woman*gesture) being highly significant (F = 12.096; p < 0.001).
Table 4: Values of variable “interpersonal”
The ratings on the variable “task-oriented” showed a similar tendency. Woman
A rated higher with gestures (6.03 r 0.74) and lower without (5.37 r 0.97). The
opposite was true for Woman B (see table 5). The analysis of variance showed
that the variable woman (F(1,72) = 3.792; p < 0.055) and gesture (F = 2.841; p <
0.096) barely reached statistical significance at the 5% level. However the
interaction term (woman*gesture) was highly significant (F = 23.925; p <
0.001).
The ratings on the variable “anxious” were clearly dependant on the person.
Woman A (2.98 r 1.35) rated significantly lower than woman B (4.45 r 2.20).
The analysis of variance showed that the variable woman had a significant influ-
ence (F(1,76) = 13.880; p < 0.001), but not the variable gesture
(F = 1.439; p < 0.234) and the interaction term (F = 0.036; p < 0.850)
Hypothesis H1 stated that sales people differ regarding affective
measurements in this study represented by the independent variables
interpersonal, task-oriented and anxious. This was rejected for the variable
interpersonal, reached almost significant levels for the variable task-oriented and
is accepted for the variable anxious.

62 Jürg Hari & Michael Stros & John Marriott
Woman Gesture Mean Standard
deviation N
+ 6.03 0.74 18
- 5.37 0.97 20
A
Total 5.68 0.93 38
+ 4.61 1.02 19
- 5.98 0.81 19
B
Total 5.30 1.15 38
+ 5.30 1.14 37
- 5.66 0.94 39
Total
Total 5.49 1.05 76
Woman Gesture Mean Standard
deviation N
+ 3.25 1.59 20
- 2.70 1.03 20
A
Total 2.98 1.35 40
+ 4.65 2.03 20
- 4.25 2.20 20
B
Total 4.45 2.10 40
+ 3.95 1.93 40
- 3.48 1.87 40
Total
Total 3.71 1.90 80
Table 5: Values of variable “task-oriented”
Table 6: Values of variable “anxious”
Table 7 shows the final outcome measure, the customer’s intention to buy the
offered product. Customers were more likely to buy from Woman A (4.65 r
1.73) than from Woman B (3.32 r 2.09). The analysis of variance showed a
highly significant interaction between woman and gesture (F(1,76) = 7.087; p <
0.009). The variable woman was also significant (F = 7.087; p < 0.009), but not
the variable gesture (F = 1.522; p < 0.221).

The 30-Second-Sale 63
Woman Gesture Mean Standard
deviation N
+ 5.05 1.76 18
- 4.25 1.65 20
A
Total 4.65 1.73 38
+ 2.22 1.77 19
- 4.30 1.86 19
B
Total 3.32 2.09 38
+ 3.71 2.25 37
- 4.28 1.74 39
Total
Total 4.00 2.01 76
Interpersonal Task-oriented Anxious Intention to buy
Pearson correlation - .746** -.267* .616**
Interpersonal
N 75 74 75 74
Pearson correlation .746 - -.342** .655**
Taskoriented
N 74 76 76 74
Pearson correlation -.267* -.342** - -.483**
Anxiou s
N 75 76 80 78
Pearson correlation .616** .655** -.483** -
Intention to buy
N 74 74 78 78
Table 7: Values of variable “Intention to buy”
Table 9 shows the correlations between the different variables. The three inde-
pendent variables interpersonal, task-oriented and anxious are correlated with
each other and all strongly correlate with the intention to buy the product. The
Cronbach’s Alpha for the multi-item variable interpersonal was 0.904 and for the
variable task-oriented was 0.849.
Table 8: Conventional correlation matrix (Pearson correleation); * p<0.05 ** p<0.01
A regression model (regressing the three affective variables interpersonal, task
oriented and anxious on the intention to buy the product) is presented in table 9.
The model explains 66.9% of the total variance and has a high explanatory
power (F(3,70) = 47.15; p < 0.001). All three variables show a statistical signifi-
cant on the intention to buy, thus confirming H4 and H5.

64 Jürg Hari & Michael Stros & John Marriott
non-standardised
coefficients
standardised
coefficients T significance
B
standard
error Beta B
standard
error
constant -.045 .730 -.061 .951
interpersonal .723 .158 .474 4.587 .000
taskoriented .530 .188 .297 2.822 .006
anxious -.241 .078 -.224 -3.085 .003
Table 9: Regression model with dependent variable “intention to buy”
In combination, the correlation and regression results confirm hypothesis 2,
which stated that the affective profile of a sales person affects the purchase in-
tention of a customer.
6 Discussion of the Findings
The results of the present study indicate that interpersonal qualities and task-
oriented qualities have a positive effect on the purchase intention. Anxiety, on
the other hand, has a negative effect. The analysis of variance revealed that
neither the parameter “gesture” nor the parameter “person” had a statistically
significant influence on the rating. The interaction of the two parameters was,
however, highly significant. This suggests that the experimental instruction to
use gestures heavily influenced the rating of the intention to buy the product. For
the two sales women this change occurred in exactly the opposite direction. This
unexpected result prompted a search for differences in the videotaping of the
sales situation. The protocol revealed that one woman felt uneasy with the in-
struction to use gestures and the other women felt exactly the opposite. Ob-
viously, this uneasiness was unconsciously but easily detectable for the tested
persons on visual inspection of the interactions. As a result, the study confirmed
the suggested hypotheses. These results also add to the validity of the model
shown in figure 1. However, it is also evident, that additional variables need to
be added. A potential variable could be authenticity of the salesperson (Hennig-
Thurau 2006).
This interpretation of the findings is also in line with the results of a recent
study on customers participating in service interactions using smiling as a
stimulus variable (Hennig-Thurau 2006). The study showed that smiling by
employee alone did not influence the outcome measures, but the perceived au-

The 30-Second-Sale 65
thenticity of the employee did. The above mentioned uneasiness of the sales-
person in this study translated into diminished authenticity. Because sales deci-
sions are partly made on the basis of unconscious impressions and their resulting
decisions, the scientific findings of thin-slice judgements research will have a
significant impact for retailers, marketing managers and human resource execu-
tives in their daily work. The methodology of thin-slice judgements also seems
to be a feasible tool for the selection and training of sales personnel. It also im-
plies that non-verbal behaviour plays an important, perhaps even more important
role than competence does.
7 Future Research
Thins-slices appear to be an automatic process and individuals are usually un-
aware of the cues they use in forming their judgements of others (Ambady
2006). In a sales person customer interaction this will apply for both sides. The
customer will assess the sales person and the sales person will assess the cus-
tomer. This immediately will raise three avenues for further research: First, can
sales people be trained to get better judgments or, second, can the sales people be
selected on the basis of naïve judgements? A third alternative would be that
some sales people can be trained (or again selected) to assess the customers
willingness to buy quickly. Not loosing too much time with the wrong prospect
is a mantra in business-to-business sales situations.
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