Drown or Blossom? The Impact of Perceived Chronic Time Pressure on Retail Salespeople's Performance and Customer–Salesperson Relationships

[Display omitted] •80% of retail managers see excessive chronic time pressure as a problem in practice.•Chronic time pressure at low levels can activate retail salespeople.•Excessive chronic time pressure can harm retail salespeople's work performance.•Learning orientation can help to cope with such chronic time pressure.•Chronic time pressure barely affects performance-oriented retail salespeople. For retail salespeople chronic time pressure, a perpetual perception of being rushed for time, is a prevalent and pervasive phenomenon in their daily sales jobs. Despite this practical relevance, consequences of perceived chronic time pressure on retail salespeople's selling behaviors, such as adaptive selling, and selling performance are not well understood. Thus, the authors investigate the effect of retail salespeople's perceived chronic time pressure in interactions with customers and its impact on retail salespeople's adaptive selling behavior, customers’ purchase outcomes, as well as salespeople's overall objective performance. Analysis of dyadic data from 291 salesperson–customer interactions from a large B2C furniture retailer revealed an inverse U-shaped curve for the relationship between retail salespeople's perceived chronic time pressure and their adaptive selling behavior. The chronic time pressure–selling outcome relationship strongly depends on the contingencies of retail salespeople's goal orientations and perceived organizational support and has implications for retail research and practice.