Some salespeople cope with the chronic stress that accompanies sales jobs better than others. That is, while all salespeople possess some ability for coping with job stress, some coping mechanisms work better than others. Thus, it is critically important to identify the coping mechanismwhich are associated with the most positive organizational outcomes (i.e., higher performance, increased retention). Research on the coping mechanisms of salespeople is in its exploratory stage. Increased knowledge concerning how salespeople cope with chronic job stress would help researchers and managers to clarify why certain job outcomes occur instead of others (i.e., performance, retention, and burnout). This study proposes and tests a set of relationships pertaining to the dimensionality and the outcomes of salespeople's coping styles. The model identifies the antecedents of coping style and proposes three types of coping style salespeople employ to reduce job stress- emotion focused coping (EFC), problemfocused coping (PFC) and action oriented coping (AOC). It also elucidates the outcomes associated with EFC and PFC styles. The empiricalfindingssuggest that among salespeople, those who use PFC possess a more pronounced internal locus of control, perceive higher social support, and project higher continuance commitment, and higher self efficacy than those who use EFC. The findings …

Because of the high and rapidly increasing cost of health care, wellness has become a significant issue for both health care practitioners and the general public. This research examines the issue of wellness and seeks to develop a model that identifies the factors that are most significant in explaining why people engage in wellness activities. A questionnaire was mailed to a sample (n = 499) randomly selected from the general population of the United States. Predictor variables are the demographic variables of age, income, education and gender together with the cognitive variables of self-actualization, benefits of wellness behavior, health locus of control and threat to health. Dependent variables are the health-seeking behaviors of exercise, stress management, nutrition, health responsibility and social support. Canonical correlation, t-tests, regression and analysis of variance are used to analyze the data. Chapter one presents two existing health models. The first presents prevention or threat to health and the second proposes self-actualization as motivating wellness behavior. The research model combines the two models. Chapter two presents relevant studies in the literature regarding use of multivariate models in consumer behavior, dimensions of wellness and empirical findings of wellness-related research. Chapter three presents the research hypotheses, research design …