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The COVID-19 pandemic has led to major sales strategy and process changes as many interactions migrated from face-to-face to virtual environments. The nature of the interactions changed, and sales firms, the sales function and salespeople created new processes to excel in virtual environments. As sales processes evolve further, this paper aims to focus on understanding the enduring shifts in sales strategy and processes. In addition, this study seeks to understand the characteristics of enduring shifts and how they are distinct from temporary shifts.

This qualitative analysis provides a comprehensive overview of the sales organizations and salespeople over the period from the start of the pandemic to early 2022. The authors interviewed 66 sales professionals from different countries and industries to better understand the temporary and enduring shifts in sales strategy and processes, adopting ad inductive and narrative approach.

There are four major findings. First, four key themes emerged: increased digitalization, resistance to digitalization, sales process changes and sales organization transformation. Second, changes are classified as temporary, permanent and accelerated changes. Third, some proposed changes were not supported. Finally, five findings were found that were not discussed in previous literature.

This paper finds distinctive findings that offer additional valuable insights that connect to and extend existing literature. These include emerging themes, classification shifts, unsupported proposed changes and unique findings.

This study aimed to provide an exploratory analysis of digitalization processes in small professional service firms (SPSFs) by examining their main drivers and barriers and their impact on customer management practices, considering the intra-organizational, inter-organizational and service offering dimensions.

This study adopted a qualitative, exploratory and inductive research methodology based on in-depth interviews with 19 owners or consultants of small tax/accounting firms, focusing on the role of digitalization in their internal and external processes.

The findings reveal external and internal barriers to and drivers of digitalization, as well as its effects on customer management practices. They also reveal the emergence of tensions related to the intra-organizational, inter-organizational and service offering dimensions.

This work contributes to the research on the role of digital technologies in the professional service sector, with a focus on SPSFs, which has thus far received limited attention. This research highlights the complexity of combining increasingly standardized processes and services with the need to maintain flexibility and informality in internal and external interactions.

The main objective of this study is to assess the applicability and robustness of the information motivation behavioural skills (IMB) model in determining dietary supplement usage of pregnant and breastfeeding women. More specifically, we examine the indirect effects of online social capital and internet use for health information on dietary supplement usage through self-efficacy and the moderating role of educational attainment.

Data was collected from 415 pregnant and breastfeeding Italian women using a self-administered questionnaire. Hypotheses were tested using Hayes's (2013) PROCESS macro for SPSS.

Internet use for health information is directly associated with dietary supplement usage. Online social capital and internet use for health information positively influence dietary supplement usage through self-efficacy. However, the results from moderated mediation analyses show that the mediation effects are moderated by educational attainment so that indirect relationships were stronger among women with a lower level of education than among those with a higher level of education.

Dietary supplement marketers and public health agencies can develop and implement dietary supplement promotional materials and interventions by disseminating information through the internet and social media and by strengthening social ties on online networking sites.

The originality of this study lies in the use of the IMB model as a theoretical framework to examine the mediating role of self-efficacy and the moderating role of education in explaining the mechanism of how online social capital and internet use for health information influence dietary supplement usage.

This paper aims to explore the challenges and opportunities faced by buying centers in small and medium enterprises (SME) manufacturing companies in view of recent technological changes and the virtualization of communication.

This study uses a qualitative approach with multiple case studies to portray complex realities within the buying centers in the manufacturing SME context. The authors selected five Italian companies to portray the diverse characteristics, practices and policies of relevant stakeholders before reaching saturation with the issues explored.

The authors find that interactions among buying center members are more effective with greater collaboration and exchange (as opposed to competition and a struggle for power). Virtual/hybrid relations require greater intra-group cooperation, whereas diverse backgrounds and collaborative interactions help the flexibility and performance of the buying center. Greater use of technology produces certainty and automation, but it may also cause overload and biases that can be solved with the ability to analyze and clear responsibility for decisions.

The authors studied only five Italian companies in this study. Future research in other countries with diverse cultural and socio-economic conditions and methods would help extend this research.

The findings would improve the understanding of the challenges of adopting new purchase process technologies that would help automate routine tasks, produce useful data and support decision-making.

Unlike prior studies, this study uses an exploratory design to study the evolution of buying centers in SMEs to seek deeper insights into the challenges and opportunities faced by SMEs because of the growing use of emerging technologies.

This paper aims to explore the impact of salespeople’s goal orientation and self-regulatory mode on their performance through sales ambidexterity and sales technology infusion (STI) using a sales technology ecosystem approach.

This paper adopts a qualitative methodology, through in-depth interviews with salespeople from a diverse range of industries, age profiles and contexts, to explore the narratives and original meanings related to their goal orientation, self-regulatory mode, ambidexterity, STI and performance.

Sceptics are salespeople who may fear or hesitate to fully use the sales technology, whereas enthusiasts are ambidextrous salespeople with high STI, who are more open to change and able to face uncertainty, regardless of the differences in their background in terms of industry, age and experience.

STI may be influenced by individual factors, such as the salesperson’s goal orientation and self-regulatory mode. Hence, sales organizations should try to foster and facilitate further STI and sales ambidexterity, which are key to achieving positive outcomes in today’s technology-intensive sales settings.

This paper extends the current literature on sales technology and sales ambidexterity within a sales technology ecosystem perspective and provides new insight on the combined impact of these variables on the salesperson’s performance.

This paper aims to describe the impact of the labor market on the integration of Africa into the global supply chain (GSC).

The analysis of trends and comparison of data for 55 nations and territories in Africa using existing data from the World Bank and International Labor Organization, and government and nongovernment reports took place using qualitative content analysis methodology.

Africa’s labor market enhances the continent’s integration into the GSC despite challenges in other areas, with three pillars identifying the labor market’s strategic sourcing decisions.

The analysis is limited to trends analysis, some of which may have changed during the study.

The findings will enable the global business industry and governments to envision the potential and design Africa’s labor market competitiveness across the African continent. The findings also establish the necessity and opportunity for enhanced infrastructure to attract additional foreign direct.

The social implication of this paper is beyond the potential of Africa’s labor market. The paper illustrates how the African is setting to become the next sourcing hub for the global supply chain, allowing scholars to close any prevailing global sourcing gap in research.

This paper describes the potential of Africa’s supply of low-cost labor market and its integration in the GSC.