This chapter summarizes the main findings of this research. In this chapter the theoretical contributions and implications are also presented. The aim of this research was to investigate the nature of the sales students motivation and to explore how motivation effects on sales students to choose their career in sales and why they have selected to study sales or sales management.
The research problem was the sales students are more extrinsically motivated to sales career rather than intrinsically. As seen in theoretical framework, the main ideas in this study is that the motivation effects on sales students to choose sales career. The solution to research problem was investigated by interviewing the sales students of the IBS (International Business and Sales Management) Programme of University of Eastern Finland. The problem could be capsulized into one question : “How the intrinsic and extrinsic motivation effect on sales students to pursue their career in sales?” The problem was studies within two research questions: RQ1:
How does the motivation effects on sales students? RQ2: Why sales students have selected to study sales or sales management?
The sales students of the IBS Programme of UEF experiences sever motivational problems.
Although some sales students felt motivation is good. Most of the sales students are extrinsically motivated to sales work. They want to do sales job because of high income and job security. However, the previous research suggests that money and rewards have a major impact on salesperson’s motivation to sales career (Wiley 1997).
The sales study and sales management courses have a positive effect on some of the sales students. The sales students feel they have learned many things and experienced also which they couldn’t get from workplace. But most of the sales students feel teaching style should be more developed. Because they are extrinsically motivated to sales work to sales job, but they wanted to increase their intrinsic motivation to sales work. Extrinsic motivation gives them only stress and dissatisfaction. That is why they chose to study sales which could make it interesting and increase their intrinsic motivation. But there is only theoretical knowledge which the sales courses provide. There is very less practical sales task which the sales students needed to get interest in sales work and increase their confidence level. Also, the sales students feel they did not get enough feedback and appreciation from their supervisor and lecturer when they did some sales task which decrease their motivation. The sales students need more
feedback because positive or negative feedback make them understand their mistake and they would not repeat this mistake in their workplace. The sales study positively effects on some of the sales student’s intrinsic motivation and also it decreases some sales student’s motivation.
The motivational problems affect directly to the sales student’s intention to sales career.
The aim of this research was to offer information about motivation including intrinsic and extrinsic motivation, sales study, and sales career. The research gives an overall image of sales student’s motivation. Previous researches have concentrated on salespeople’s motivation not sales student’s motivation to sales career. In this research the perspective is different than in earlier researches as this study aims to increase sales student’s motivation to choose sales as a career.
The study is based on SDT. The main idea of SDT is that motivation is either extrinsic or intrinsic (Deci & Ryan 1985; Ryan & Deci 2000). Different motivation types affect differently to quality of performance (Ryan & Deci 2000). The intrinsic motivation is usually seen as better and more long-term motivation than extrinsic motivation (Deci & Ryan 1985). The extrinsic motivation comes from extrinsic rewards, for example monetary rewards (Deci &
Ryan 1985).
The previous research has mainly focused on the intrinsic and extrinsic motivation of salespeople in the workplace (Gagné & Deci 2005, Gagné et al. 2010). But this research studies the intrinsic and extrinsic motivation of sales students to sales career which is different from the previous research. The data collection also shows the perceptions of the sales students about intrinsic and extrinsic motivation to sales career. The contribution of this research is to explore the intrinsic and extrinsic motivation of sales students and the effects of motivation on sales students to choose sales career. This research suggests how to improve and increase the intrinsic motivation of sales students to pursue their career in sales. However, the previous research only stated that the educational practice has a positive effect on sales student’s perceptions to sales career (Cummins et al. 2015).
As the previous research suggest, the best motivators are the things that people need but lack (Wiley 1997). Therefore, the IBS Programme of UEF or Sales Education should carefully consider what the sales students want to learn and how to increase their motivation to sales career more. The IBS Programme of UEF could use this research to understand how to motivate the sales students more.
Because this research is a case study, the result cannot be directly generalized to all the sales students. Also, there are only six respondents who are the sales students of IBS Programme of UEF. Not all students are interested in sales and not every student responded for this research’s interview. Also, cultural differences may occur in motivation facts because different country’s people might have different perspectives about motivation and sales career.
More research of motivation is needed to be able to fully understand the concept of human motivation. As this study concentrated to obtain in-depth view of sales student’s motivation, it would be useful to conduct quantitative studies to test results of this study in larger scale.
Quantitative studies could include more respondents from many educational institutions and countries.