Journal of Financial Services Marketing

, Volume 19, Issue 2, pp 146–154 | Cite as

Big Five personality traits and financial salesperson performance: An application of Chernoff faces

  • Neil Lilford
  • Debbie Vigar-Ellis
  • Deon Nel
Original Article
First Online:
Received:
Revised:

Abstract

Identifying the personality traits of effective sales people has been a long-standing challenge to sales managers and researchers in a wide range of contexts from business-to-business, to retail and services. A definitive identification of the characteristics of the ideal salesperson remains elusive. We investigate the impact of the Big Five personality traits on the performance of salespersons in a large financial services organization, our purpose being to graphically illustrate how personality traits differ according to different levels of sales performance. We present the results graphically using Chernoff faces. The study demonstrates that this approach provides valuable insights to sales managers and has several possible applications in relation to financial salesperson performance management.

Keywords

financial salesperson performance Big Five Personality Chernoff faces 
This is a preview of subscription content, log in to check access.

References

  1. Anderson, E. (1960) A semigraphical method for the analysis of complex problems. Technometrics 2 (3): 387–391.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  2. Benet-Martínez, V. and John, O.P. (1998) Los Cinco Grandes across cultures and ethnic groups: Multitrait-multimethod analyses of the Big Five in Spanish and English. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 75 (3): 729–750.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  3. Beniger, J.R. and Robyn, D.L. (1978) Quantitative graphics in statistics: A brief history. The American Statistician 32 (1): 1–11.Google Scholar
  4. Campbell, C., Berthon, P., Pitt, L., McCarthy, I. and Plangger, K. (2011) Making a face: Graphical illustrations of managerial stances toward customer creativity. Australasian Marketing Journal 20 (1): 9–15.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  5. Chernoff, H. (1973) The use of faces to represent points in k-dimensional space graphically. Journal of American Statistical Association 68 (342): 361–368.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  6. Chernoff, H. (1978) Graphical representation as a discipline. In: P.C. Wang (ed.) Graphical Representation of Multivariate Data. New York: Academic Press, pp. 1–11.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  7. Cleveland, W.S. (1985) The Elements of Graphic Data. Monterey, CA: Wadsworth Advanced Books.Google Scholar
  8. Costa, P.T. and McCrae, R.R. (1992) Normal personality assessment in clinical practice: The NEO personality inventory. Psychological Assessment 4 (1): 5–13.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  9. Cronbach, L.J. (1951) Coefficient alpha and the internal structure of tests. Psychometrika 16 (3): 297–334.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  10. Everitt, B. (1978) Graphical Techniques for Multivariate Data. London: Heinemann Educational Books.Google Scholar
  11. Farshid, M., Chan, A. and Nel, D. (2012) A sweet face man: Using Chernoff faces to portray social media wine brand images. International Journal of Wine Business Research 24 (3): 183–195.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  12. Farshid, M., Plangger, K. and Nel, D. (2011) The social media faces of major global financial service brands. Journal of Financial Services Marketing 16 (3): 220–229.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  13. Fienberg, S.E. (1979) Graphical methods in statistics. The American Statistician 33 (4): 165–178.Google Scholar
  14. Goldberg, L.R. (1992) The development of markers for the Big-Five factor structure. Psychological Assessment 4 (1): 26–42.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  15. Garner, W.R. (1974) The Processing of Information and Structure. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.Google Scholar
  16. Gosling, S.D., Rentfrow, P.J. and Swann Jr, W.B. (2003) A very brief measure of the Big-Five personality domains. Journal of Research in Personality 37 (6): 504–528.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  17. Huff, D.L., Mahajan, V. and Black, W.C. (1981) Facial representation of multivariate data. Journal of Marketing 45 (4): 53–59.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  18. John, O.P., Naumann, L.P. and Soto, C.J. (2008) Paradigm shift to the integrative Big Five trait taxonomy. In: O.P. John, R.W. Robins and L.A. Pervin (eds.) Handbook of Personality: Theory and Research. New York: Guilford, pp. 114–158.Google Scholar
  19. John, O.P. and Srivastava, S. (1999) The big five trait taxonomy: History, measurement, and theoretical perspectives. In: O.P. John, R.W. Robins and L.A. Pervin (eds.) Handbook of Personality: Theory and Research. New York: Guilford, pp. 102–138.Google Scholar
  20. Mayer, D. and Greenberg, H.M. (1964) What makes a good salesman? Harvard Business Review 42 (July-August): 119–125.Google Scholar
  21. McCrae, R.R. and Costa Jr, P.T. (1999) A five-factor theory of personality. In: O.P. John, R.W. Robins and L.A. Pervin (eds.) Handbook of Personality: Theory and Research. New York: Guilford, pp. 139–153.Google Scholar
  22. Nel, D., Pitt, L.F. and Webb, T. (1994) Using Chernoff faces to portray service quality data. Journal of Marketing Management 10 (1–3): 247–255.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  23. Raciborski, R. (2009) Graphical representation of multivariate data using Chernoff faces. The Stata Journal 9 (3): 374–387.Google Scholar
  24. StataCorp (2009) Stata Statistical Software. College Station, TX: StataCorp.Google Scholar
  25. Sujan, H., Weitz, B.A. and Kumar, N. (1994) Learning orientations, working smart, and effective selling. Journal of Marketing 58 (3): 39–50.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  26. Zelazny, G. (1972) Choosing and Using Charts. New York: Video Arts.Google Scholar

Copyright information

© Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Ltd 2014

Authors and Affiliations

  • Neil Lilford
    • 1
  • Debbie Vigar-Ellis
    • 1
  • Deon Nel
    • 1
    • 2
  1. 1.Division of Industrial Marketing, Royal Institute of Technology (KTH)School of Management, IT & Governance, University of KwaZulu-NatalPietermaritzburgSouth Africa
  2. 2.Division of Industrial Marketing, Royal Institute of Technology (KTH)Royal Institute of Technology (KTH)StockholmSweden

Personalised recommendations