The Job Image of Young Sales Assistants: Introspection and Young Customers’ Assessment

Although the retail sector is one of the most important employers in Austria, sales jobs in retailing have many negative connotations. Changes in the retailing landscape in the past few decades — for example the phenomenon of the ‘hybrid consumer’ and the polarisation of specialist shops and cut-price supermarkets — have led to a higher degree of self-service. In addition, general changes in societal values have resulted in perceivable changes in customers’ behaviour. These days customers tend to demand less service, and the younger the customers the more comfortable they are with the principle of self-service. Service has become a kind of added benefit that has to be paid for. Naturally this phenomenon is predominantly identified with low-price retailers, discounters and retailers that focus their marketing activities on younger customers.