The Relationship Between Job Liking, Selling Skills, and Empowerment of Retail Salespeople and their Affective Organizational Commitment

Committed retail salespeople are a key success factor in retail businesses, since commitment urges them to engage in discretionary efforts leading to customer satisfaction and retention (Zeithaml et al., 1990). Research findings indicate that there are many important predictors of organizational commitment of salespeople: these include, amongst others, role ambiguity (Agarwal & Ramaswami, 1993), task characteristics (Hunt et al., 1985), supervisory behaviors (Johnston et al., 1990), organizational structure (Michaels et al., 1988), and job satisfaction (Babakus et al., 1999). However, affective organizational commitment of retail salespeople in the context of their empowerment along with their job liking and perceived selling skills has not yet been examined. This study addresses this research gap using a multilevel modeling approach.