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

Authors

Omar S. Itani, The University of Texas Rio Grande ValleyFollow
Raj Agnihotri
Rebecca Dingus

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

10-2017

Abstract

Highlights

• 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.

Abstract

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.

Comments

Original published version available at https://doi.org/10.1016/j.indmarman.2017.06.012

Recommended Citation

Itani, O.S., Agnihotri, R. and Dingus, R., 2017. 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, 66, pp.64-79. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.indmarman.2017.06.012

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.2017.06.012