Commitment to technological change, sales force intelligence norms, and salesperson key outcomes

Engaging a product-focused sales force in solution selling: interplay of individual- and organizational-level conditions

“…We also find that prior research offers competing premises regarding the heterogeneity of transformation paths-see Appendix Table 10. Most studies predict uniform transformation paths and seek to identify a clear set of transformation drivers that will lead to desired outcomes (e.g., Hayati et al 2018;Homburg et al 2010;Hunter and Panagopoulos 2015;Johnson and Sohi 2017). Yet some studies highlight that salespeople differ fundamentally in their ability to change and argue that the "successful implementation of planned change interventions largely depends on identifying and appreciating the heterogeneity of individual traits that share meaning with the change" (Ahearne et al 2010, p. 65).…”

“…First, the results advance understanding of effective implementations of sales force-wide planned changes in complex transformation contexts (Ahearne et al 2010;Hartmann et al 2018). Most prior sales force transformation studies seek to detail a clear set of specific, exclusive transformation drivers that lead to the desired outcomes when applied universally to sales forces (e.g., Hayati et al 2018;Homburg et al 2010;Hunter and Panagopoulos 2015;Johnson and Sohi 2017). However, Ahearne et al (2010) suggest that salesperson transformation paths are idiosyncratic, because salespersons differ fundamentally in their ability to change.…”

IT usage for enhancing trade show performance: evidence from the aviation services

“…To achieve such objectives, sales managers in the b2b sector employ a wide variety of IT-based solutions using the internet as platform for commerce and co-ordinations. Several academic studies have investigated the impact of IT usage on business relationships and performance (e.g., Ryssel, Ritter, & Gemunden, 2004;Avlonitis and Panagopoulos, 2005;Tong, Johnson, Umesh, & Lee, 2008;Brady, Fellenz, & Brookes, 2008), and the critical role of IT adoption for sales performance in b2b firms has also been highlighted by recent studies (e.g., Homburg, Wieseke, & Kuehnl, 2009;Hunter and Panagopoulos, 2015). IT integration can enhance the efficacy of pre and post sales activities (Tong et al, 2008).…”

“…In the context of b2b, new technologies continue to increase the efficiency and effectiveness of salespeople navigating through the sales process (Hunter and Panagopoulos, 2015). When initiating customer contact, IT can aid salespeople by giving them quicker access to better information and enables the salesperson to locate a larger prospect base in a shorter period of time (Keillor, Bashaw and Pettijohn, 1997).…”

Relationship commitment and value creation in sponsorship relationships

“…In the marketing literature, many studies treat relationship commitment as a onedimensional construct, but far fewer treat relationship commitment as comprising multiple types or multiple components. The latter studies have been conducted in contexts such as industrial distribution channels (Chang et al 2012;Davis-Sramek et al 2009;Gilliland and Bello 2002;Jain et al 2014;Kim, Hubbard and Swain 2011;Liu et al 2010;Sharma, Young, and Wilkinson 2015), manufacturing firms (Cater & Cater, 2010), the pharmaceutical industry (Hunter and Panagopoulos 2015), the printing and publishing industry (Chandrashekaran et al 2000), service industries such as banking and insurance (Lam 2012;Malhotra et al 2013;Verhoef, Frances and Hoekstra 2002), sports teams (Melancon, Noble and Noble 2011), telecom services (Gustaffsson, Johnson and Roos 2005), travel agencies (Wieseke et al 2007), and universities (Ganesan et al 2010), but studies in the sponsorship relationship context are lacking.…”