THE IMPACT OF EXPERIENTIAL LEARNING ON STUDENT PERCEPTIONS OF A CAREER IN SALES

Students generally tend to avoid the sales profession as salespeople are often perceived as insincere, pushy, aggressive, and annoying. Moreover, their negative perception of the profession continues to be reinforced by their lack of understanding about it. This study aims to examine the impact of participation in personal selling experiential learning course on student perceptions of a career in sales. Students enrolled in personal selling course participated in a range of experiential learning activities over the course of one semester including promoting financial service product in a real sales environment. The findings presented in this study show that students’ confidence, interest, and knowledge in selling differs before and after their participation in experiential learning. Also, interest in selling is associated with the student’s intention to pursue career in selling.