Content marketing · Abstract-supported quantitative empirical study

Leveraging social media in B2B sales: impact on in-role and customer relationship performance

Journal of Business & Industrial Marketing · 2026

V. Srivastava, R. Kumar

Summary

Job-related social-media use improved in-role performance, with online social capital strengthening the effect; its sales-performance effect was indirect through in-role performance. Personal-branding use improved customer-relationship performance. For a founder, use this as a question to test in your own context, not a universal playbook.

For your marketing

Possible founder application

Treat this as evidence for the specific b2b growth and sales question studied. Compare the setting and sample to your company before changing a growth decision; use a local experiment where the paper does not match your context.

Reported result

What the study found

Research question

What the authors investigated

How do job-related and personal-branding social-media use affect salesperson in-role performance, customer-relationship performance and sales outcomes?

Design

Survey of salespeople; mediation/moderation analysis of social-media use, online social capital, in-role performance and relationship performance.

Sample and setting

276 valid salesperson responses across sectors, collected using snowball and purposive sampling.

Scope and transfer

Limitations to keep in view

Non-probability, cross-sectional, self-reported survey; publisher abstract does not expose the full limitations section.

Research sources

Publisher DOI record and accessible article/abstract directly support the bibliographic record and the summary fields; editorial review remains appropriate for duplicate checking against the unseen 300-study library. Correction notices were not separately verified in this collection; consult the current publisher record before applying the findings.

Study strength

3/5 Exploratory evidence; interpret cautiously

How this was assessed

The 1–5 evidence-check score is a practical reading aid, not a formal peer review or a probability that a conclusion is true. It combines design strength (2 points), sample reporting (1), comparison/control clarity (1), and how much of the paper could be checked (1). Access affects how confidently this directory can assess a study, not the study's underlying quality. Blinding is reported separately because it is not relevant to every design.

Design · 1/2

The described design supports the question, but it does not establish causal effects beyond the reported setting.

Sample · 0.8/1

The reviewed source reports a sample or corpus size (276); size alone does not establish representativeness.

Comparison · 0.5/1

The comparison structure is limited or depends on the paper's model/context.

Can we check it? · 0.5/1

Only publisher abstract/metadata was retrieved; full methods and robustness could not be checked.

Double-blind? Blinding was not established from the captured source; it may not apply to this study design.

Read the paper

V. Srivastava, R. Kumar

Journal of Business & Industrial Marketing · 2026

Read the paper ↗

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