What is it about?
This paper examines the use of social media by business-to-business (B2B) salespeople to assist in their job functions. The authors propose that a salesperson's attitude toward social media usefulness, as well as a salesperson's learning orientation, will influence how much a salesperson uses social media to assist in day-to-day job tasks. Additionally, the impact that the use of social media has on collecting knowledge about competitors, adapting to customers, and sales performance is considered. Accordingly, a broad literature review is provided to introduce extant theory contributing to the proposed model. The practical uses of social media by salespeople will be described, and then the theoretical foundation is built, encompassing social media use, goal orientations, and adaptive selling theory. Results of an empirical model are provided, followed by a discussion of theoretical and managerial implications.
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Why is it important?
Findings of the study suggest that social media is one way to enhance sales performance, but its use alone does not guarantee such enhancement. Social media use will affect performance of salespeople through affecting their competitive intelligence collection and adaptive selling. Perceived usefulness of social media was not significantly related to salesperson social media use. Results support linking collection of competitive intelligence to a salesperson’s adaptive selling behavior.
Perspectives
This paper examines the use of social media by business-to-business (B2B) salespeople to assist in their job functions. The authors propose that a salesperson's attitude toward social media usefulness, as well as a salesperson's learning orientation, will influence how much a salesperson uses social media to assist in day-to-day job tasks. Additionally, the impact that the use of social media has on collecting knowledge about competitors, adapting to customers, and sales performance is considered. Accordingly, a broad literature review is provided to introduce extant theory contributing to the proposed model. The practical uses of social media by salespeople will be described, and then the theoretical foundation is built, encompassing social media use, goal orientations, and adaptive selling theory. Results of an empirical model are provided, followed by a discussion of theoretical and managerial implications. Findings of the study suggest that social media is one way to enhance sales performance, but its use alone does not guarantee such enhancement. Social media use will affect performance of salespeople through affecting their competitive intelligence collection and adaptive selling. Perceived usefulness of social media was not significantly related to salesperson social media use. Results support linking collection of competitive intelligence to a salesperson’s adaptive selling behavior.
Dr Omar S. Itani
Univeristy of texas at arlington
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Social media use in B2b sales and its impact on competitive intelligence collection and adaptive selling: Examining the role of learning orientation as an enabler, Industrial Marketing Management, July 2017, Elsevier,
DOI: 10.1016/j.indmarman.2017.06.012.
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