Social media and customer relationship management technologies: Influencing buyer-seller information exchanges

Authors

Omar S. Itani, The University of Texas Rio Grande ValleyFollow
Michael T. Krush
Raj Agnihotri
Kevin J. Trainor

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

10-2020

Abstract

Highlights

• Social media and CRM technology aid salespeople in market sensing and customer-linking activities.

• Social media utilization enhance the competitive information collection abilities of the seller.

• CRM techpositively affects seller product information communication, which enablesbuyer information sharing intentions.

• Sellers capture value from buyers by CRM utilization.

• Seller experience has significant moderating and explanatory power regarding the use of sales technology.

Abstract

Due to the increasing array of sales technology, salespeople must understand how each application assists them. This study examines how business-to-business salespeople use different forms of sales technology to meet their boundary-spanning roles. Our research draws from social exchange theory and task-technology fit theory to test a model that examines how salespeople use CRM and social media technologies differentially to support competitive information collection, product information communication, and buyer information sharing. Dyadic data from industrial buyers and sellers is used to analyze the technology-behavior relationships. Our study's results reveal social media use and CRM technology both positively influence buyer-seller information exchanges; however, each technology takes a distinct route to enable the information exchange between the buyer and the seller. The results also suggest that managers need to champion the use of both technology applications to their salesforce.

Comments

Original published version available at https://doi.org/10.1016/j.indmarman.2020.07.015

Recommended Citation

Itani, O.S., Krush, M.T., Agnihotri, R. and Trainor, K.J., 2020. Social media and customer relationship management technologies: Influencing buyer-seller information exchanges. Industrial Marketing Management, 90, pp.264-275. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.indmarman.2020.07.015

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 International License.

Publication Title

Industrial Marketing Management

DOI

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.indmarman.2020.07.015