Keyword

Direct selling; language barrier; personal selling; regional language; sales force; salespeople

Abstract

This paper discussed the language barriers of the sales force in personal selling. For the purpose, ten types of language barriers are tested with a sample of 180 salespeople who are chosen by convenience sampling method in two southern States of India namely Andhra Pradesh and Telangana where majority people speak in the Telugu language. By snowball sampling method, conversational interviews are conducted with the sampled sales force and investigated the specific language barrier that was highly troubled them during their conversations with the customers. From the total responses, ranks are given to each barrier. Study results revealed that in AP and Telangana more salespeople experienced the barriers of literacy, jargon, dialects, unclear sound, and accent. Few troubled by-word choice, pidgins, semantic gaps, slang, and linguistic ability. In urban markets, more salespeople averted by word choice and literacy, in rural areas more was hostile to semantic gaps and Jargon. The female sales force was more concerned with literacy, slang, and accent. More male sales representatives are apprehensive about dialects, unclear sound, and jargon. A similar study recommended by extending to other southern States in India such as Tamil Nadu, Odisha, Karnataka, and Maharashtra, to find out the barriers of Indian regional languages in direct selling at rural and urban markets.


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