Social media technology use and salesperson performance: A two study examination of the role of salesperson behaviors, characteristics, and training

For your marketing

Possible founder application

Use this study as a bounded example related to social media technology use and salesperson performance: a two study examination of the role of salesperson behaviors, characteristics, and training; evaluate whether its customers, intervention and outcome match your own context.

Reported result

What the study found

Social-media technology affected relationship and objective sales performance through salesperson behaviors/characteristics; technology without training did not produce the best results, making training critical.

Research question

What the authors investigated

What does social media technology use and salesperson performance: a two study examination of the role of salesperson behaviors, characteristics, and training show about customer behavior or marketing outcomes?

Design

Two empirical studies, using cross-company and within-company data, test whether shared social-media technology affects relationship and objective sales performance through product-information communication, diligence, product knowledge, and adaptability, with training as moderator.

Sample and setting

Salespeople from a random sample of 1,200 US B2B firms, spanning industries and firm sizes, plus a within-company study.

Scope and transfer

Limitations to keep in view

The publisher page exposes the empirical two-study design and findings but not a complete author limitations passage in the accessible view; no further limitation is asserted here. Full-text methods and correction history were not independently checked.

Research sources

Study metadata and reported results were cross-checked against a direct publisher-page retrieval; detailed full-text methods were not reviewed.