Earl Honeycutt, professor of business administration, and Casey DiRienzo, assistant professor of economics, were recently notified that their paper was accepted for the 2007 National Conference in Sales Management to be held in Irvine, Calif., March 28-31. The paper, titled: “The Impact of Practical Experience and Coursework on Student Attitudes Toward Sales Careers” will be presented at the conference and published in the conference proceedings. Additional co-authors include Shawn Thelen of Hofstra University and David Shepherd of Georgia Southern University. The abstract for the article appears below:
“This study examines the attitudes toward sales as a career of undergraduate business students who have completed a university sales course and report practical sales experience. Hypotheses were tested on 372 student respondents, respectively, at two medium-sized universities located in the southeastern and northeastern U.S. Support was garnered for three hypotheses tested related to positive attitudes toward sales careers: (1) completing a sales-related course; (2) completing a sales course and holding practical sales experience; and (3) males reported more positive attitudes toward sales as a career. However, when comparing each group’s response to a ten-item scale, there were more similarities between the groups than differences. These findings suggest that students with greater information about sales careers are still not prepared to endorse a sales career. A discussion of the findings and implications for sales managers and business educators are provided.”