Apple Store employees must receive some sort of incentive (money in some form or another) because I was there to purchase a Macbook and he went on and on about how I need to purchase Apple Care. I told him I don't want to purchase it and again he went on preaching about Apple Care and how Consumer Reports recommends it. He failed to mention the fact that you can buy Apple Care within the first year of making a purchase and that there is a 1 year warranty that comes with the Macbook anyway. So it's not a 3 year warranty that you are paying for with Apple Care but instead a 2 year warranty for $249. Either the Apple employee is very uninformed or he had some other motives. I have nothing against them getting rewarded for making the sale. Just don't tell me you are not on "commission" when I walk into your store.
I can't speak for the Apple Store (never worked there), but I do know it's a non-commissioned environment and most these environments don't offer monetary incentives for selling more value-added products (accessories and extended warranties, for example). Rather, a store isn't doing its job (in the company's eyes) when it fails to reach certain goals.
This was certainly the case at Best Buy when I worked there during college almost a decade ago. No commission and no monetary incentives - the company even forbade participation in manufacturer SPIFF programs. But the pressure to attach value-added products was still very much a reality. Corporate would set daily goals for accessory and extended warranty attachments. The incentive? Managers got quarterly bonuses for meeting or exceeding goals. Salespeople's incentives came in the form of job security. Poor performance equaled cut hours, and at worst, layoffs. Outstanding performance meant that you may be considered for a paltry raise after a yearly review (yay!). In fact the only bonus us "minions" got was this thing called the "70/30 Plan", which awarded an evenly distributed gift-taxable bonus to each store employee on a yearly basis for keeping shrink (theft and vandalism) under control.
Many non-commissioned stores love to praise the fact that they offer a pressure-free shopping experience when in reality, that isn't always the case. Don't think for one minute they do it on moral ground. They're doing it because they deal in volume, have high workforce turnaround (mostly teenagers and young adults with limited training), and it's a heck of a lot cheaper to pay flat wages.
I've also worked in commissioned environments (high-end audio/video) and it was a very different experience for me (in a positive way). Because I dealt in a niche market, knowing my products well was a must. I made a lot more money doing that and my customers were always happy (I knew my stuff). I also didn't have a supervisor holding a clipboard looming in the background judging my every move. I reached my goals pretty easily and in the rare times I didn't, it wasn't a big deal.
