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Although research analyzing the consequences of salesperson social media use in driving sales behaviors and performance outcomes has proliferated in the recent past, there are significant research gaps in the domain. Grounded in task-technology fit theory, this paper aims to propose a conceptual framework that integrates between previously disjointed areas of research and analyzes the relationships between salesperson social media use, brand awareness, creativity, manager empowerment and company performance.

Survey responses were collected from a multi-industry sample of 158 business-to-business salespeople. Structural relationships were tested using partial least squares structural equation modeling.

The analysis shows that salesperson social media use positively affects brand awareness. The relationship between social media and brand awareness is magnified with the increase in salesperson creativity. Findings also show that manager empowerment increases salesperson creativity. Finally, brand awareness positively affects company performance.

Sales organizations should focus on developing digital strategies, especially focusing on salesperson social media use to enhance company’s brand awareness, which in turn increases company performance. Moreover, sales managers should also follow empowering leader behaviors to enhance creativity.

The authors amalgamate salesperson social media use literature and branding literature by proposing salesperson social media use’s positive effects on brand awareness. This study also expands the knowledge by exploring the moderating effect of individual-level variables such as salesperson creativity on driving the effects of salesperson social media use.

The purpose of this paper is to understand the role of identity-based relationships, customer brand identification and peer identification, in driving customer outcomes including customer experiential hedonic value, social influence and repurchase intentions through the effects on value co-creation among customers and competitor brand hate, while taking into consideration the moderating impact of individualism.

The study integrates social identity theory, identity-based marketing perspective and self-construal theory to develop relationships. The data comprises a web-based survey of customers in the USA and was analyzed using structural equation modeling.

Customer brand identification and peer identification are drivers of value co-creation among customers, which leads to favorable outcomes at the customer and brand levels. Customer brand identification drives customers to hate competing brands, which, in turn, motivates customers to exert social influence in favor of their brand and to hold additional repurchase intentions. Customer brand identification and peer identification play different roles in motivating customers to co-create value with their fellows and drive customers to feel hatred toward competing brands contingent on customer individualism.

Customer brand identification and peer identification play different roles in engaging customers in value co-creation with their peers and competing brands have with their rivals. Individualism self-construal holds a dual role when interacting with customer identification. The study fills multiple gaps in the literature by examining additional effects of customer brand identification and peer identification and exploring a relatively new dimension of the value co-creation process, as well as the role of customers in the competition between brands.

Brands need to view customers who identify with them as socially active customers capable of participating in value co-creation with other customers and engaging in the rivalry faced by the brands. Moreover, brands are required to build and nurture relationships that are based on social identification to encourage customer brand identification and peer identification which results in favorable customer and business outcomes.

This study examines the effects of two forms of customer identification on value co-creation between customers and competitor brand hate. In addition, it identifies the dual moderating role of customer individualism on the effects of both social identification forms. The study fills multiple gaps in the literature by understanding new aspects of customer identification, value co-creation and brand hate.

COVID-19 and its precautions, including social distancing, have revolutionized traditional retailing- and consumption patterns. In this turbulent environment, the purpose of this study is twofold. First, this paper explores the direct effect of consumers’ internal/external health locus-of-control on their hygiene consciousness, which, in turn, affects their social distancing behavior. Second, this study posits that social distancing, in turn, impacts consumers’ current online grocery shopping behavior and their future online grocery shopping intentions, thus uncovering important insight.

To address these gaps, this paper develops a model that links consumers’ internal/external health locus-of-control to their adoption of e-tailing-based grocery services. Data collected through a web-based survey was analyzed by using partial least squares-based structural equation modeling.

The results indicate that consumers’ health locus-of-control indirectly affects the way they shop for their groceries during the pandemic. In particular, consumers’ internal (external) health locus-of-control drives higher (lower) hygiene consciousness and greater (lower) social distancing behavior. In turn, consumers’ online grocery shopping behavior was found to increase during the pandemic, with their corresponding intent to continue this behavior in the future. Moreover, this study finds the effects of consumers’ social distancing on their current grocery shopping behavior and future intentions to be contingent on consumer age, with stronger effects identified for older consumers.

This study shows how consumers’ internal/external health loci-of-control exert opposing effects on their social distancing behavior, as mediated by hygiene consciousness. Overall, the empirical analyzes corroborate the association of consumers’ social distancing- and online grocery shopping behavior (for consumers of different age profiles), both during and after the pandemic.

This study aims to integrate brand and retailer levels variables to examine the direct and indirect relationships between omnichannel retailing and consumer engagement.

Survey data are collected from a sample consumers of different omnichannel retailing brands operating in the skin care industry. Partial least squares structural equation modeling is utilized.

The study finds brand channels' integrated interactions (process and content consistency) to increase consumer brand engagement. Findings show retailer consumer empowerment to intensify the impact of omnichannel retailing on consumer engagement. Results also show brand channels' integrated interactions to increase consumer brand familiarity, which mediates the effect of omnichannel retailing on consumer engagement.

This study suggests that integrating brand- and retailer-level variables is vital to understand the effect of omnichannel retailing on consumer engagement. The study concludes that for successful omnichannel strategy, collaboration between brands and retailers is imperative.

This study aims to develop and test a process model of the effect of social media use by business-to-business (B2B) salespeople on their value cocreation and cross/upselling performance. Adopting a research acquisition perspective, the authors claim that salesperson’s social media use is critical for generating social capital – an operant resource characterized by superior market knowledge, reputation and networking – which, in turn, directly and synergistically enhances value cocreation and cross/upselling outcomes.

A model is developed based on extant sales research on salesperson’s social media use and social capital theory. Data from B2B salespeople is analyzed using structural equation modeling to test the proposed hypotheses.

The results demonstrate that salespeople’s social media use enhances their social capital with support for direct effects on market knowledge and reputation, and indirect effect on networking. The results also show that the three aspects of social capital drive value cocreation, which enhances cross/upselling performance. Post hoc analysis shows the indirect effects of salesperson’s social media use as well as the interconnected effects of the aspects of social capital on value cocreation.

The study indicates that salespeople should be encouraged to use social media as a means for enhancing market knowledge and reputation, which can then be leveraged to build networking skills. Providing training to salespeople and coaching them on how to build their social capital is essential if organizations need to capitalize on novel ways to improve the value cocreation performance of their sales teams.

This study demonstrates how salespeople’s social media use can enhance their social capital, which, in turn, is critical for value cocreation and cross/upselling performance. The proposed framework opens opportunities for future studies to examine the role of salesperson social capital and value cocreation in B2B exchanges.

The purpose of this study is to examine the role of salesperson moral identity centrality in value co-creation. This study identified and tested an extended identity-based formation process of selling orientation, customer orientation and value co-creation. This was accomplished by examining the role of inclusion of others in the self and circle of moral regard in the mechanism through which moral identity centrality impacts selling orientation, customer orientation and value co-creation, taking into account the contingency role of salesperson self-construal.

An extended identity-behavior model grounded in identity theory and the social-cognitive perspective of moral identity centrality was tested. The study used survey data from business-to-business salespeople. Data collected was analyzed using structural equation modeling.

The results show that a central moral identity to a salesperson’s self-drives higher expansion of the salesperson’s circle of moral regard. This process facilitates the mechanisms for salesperson moral identity centrality to decrease selling orientation and increase customer orientation and value co-creation, leading to higher sales performance. Independent self-construal is found to deteriorate the positive effects of salesperson moral identity centrality on the inclusion of others in the self, expansion of the circle of moral regard and customer orientation.

Through the conceptualized and tested framework, the study opens the door for additional research to inspect the role of moral identity centrality in sales.

Findings have implications for the human resource side of sales organizations in the areas of recruitment, mentoring, coaching and training. Moral identity centrality plays a vital role in the interface between salespeople and customers, leading to improved behavioral and sales outcomes. Sales managers must look for their salespeople’s moral identity centrality to improve morality in the attitudes and decision-making of their salesforce.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first to uncover the vital impacts of salesperson moral identity centrality on selling orientation, customer orientation and value co-creation. Through the conceptualized and tested framework, the study opens the door for additional research to inspect the role of moral identity centrality in sales.

This study aims to investigate salespersons’ self-monitoring and its effect on adaptive selling behavior. As salespeople are constantly facing different customers with various needs and want and engaging in a different sales situation, salespeople must deploy their inner capabilities in practicing adaptive selling behavior during and across sales interactions. This study also investigates the impact of salesperson’s intrapersonal leadership – where leadership stems from the individuals with the purpose to influence oneself.

Authors draw on the social cognitive theory of self-regulation to develop our model and examine the relationship between self-monitoring, thought self-leadership and adaptive selling behavior. We empirically test the model using data from 335 pharmaceutical salespeople working across several countries in Asia.

The results support the role of self-monitoring and thought self-leadership as antecedents to adaptive selling. Further, the results suggest that self-monitoring positively moderates the relationship between thought self-leadership and adaptive selling behavior. In light of these results, we explore implications and limitations and conclude by suggesting directions for further research.

The sampling method used was convenience sampling, which may limit the theoretical generalization of our results across all emerging markets. Moreover, this study examines the direct impact of self-management mechanism on adaptive selling behavior and the way it interacts with salesperson's thought self-leadership to strengthen adaptive selling behavior. However, the research model does not include organization-level drivers.

This study makes an important and original contribution to sales literature by demonstrating the direct and interaction effects of self-monitoring mechanism on a critical component of a business to business sales process, adaptive selling behavior. Results from this study highlight the critical importance of cognitive processes that drives positive selling behavior.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate guilt proneness as a prosocial salesperson trait and its impact on outcomes important to the firm, the customer as well as the salesperson. Specifically, the authors look at how this variable relates to job effort and the indirect effects on customer satisfaction. The corollary purpose is to uncover how managers influence these constructs through positive outcome feedback.

Prosocial motivation theory grounds the conceptual model which the authors test through survey implementation. The final sample consisted of 129 business-to-business (B2B) salespeople working across multiple industries in India. Latent moderated structural equation modeling was utilized to test the proposed model.

The results suggest that guilt proneness positively influences the likelihood that a salesperson adopts a relational orientation, which has a direct effect on individual effort and an indirect effect on customer satisfaction. Supervisors have the ability to amplify this effort through positive outcome feedback, but only when relational orientation is low. Their support had no effect on salespeople with a high relational orientation.

The study is unique in that it combines an overlooked prosocial trait with a B2B Indian dataset. We provide value for firms because our results show that guilt-prone salespeople put more effort into their job – ”something universally desirable among sales managers” – through the development of a relational orientation. The authors also give practical implications on how to support salespeople given their level of relational orientation.

This study examines the contextual variables that can curb the negative effects of role conflict on job satisfaction and enhance the positive effect of job satisfaction on creativity and service performance. More specifically, adopting the job demands-resources theory, the authors explore the interactive effect of frontline employee (FLE) self-monitoring and FLE-manager trust on the relationship between role conflict and job satisfaction. Extending this line of inquiry, the authors adopt social identity theory and analyze the moderating effect of FLE-manager identification on the relationship between job satisfaction and creativity and between job satisfaction and service performance.

Dyadic data utilizing 122 responses from FLEs and their managers were obtained from FLEs working with a major financial services firm in India. Structural equation modeling and PLS were used to assess the hypothesized relationships.

The negative relationship between role conflict and job satisfaction is reduced at higher levels of FLE self-monitoring and FLE-manager trust. Furthermore, FLE manager identification accentuates the effect of job satisfaction on creativity and service performance.

Organizations should invest in developing FLEs' personal and job-related resources to reduce the deleterious effects of role conflicts on FLEs' job outcomes. Specifically, managers should hire FLEs who are high in self-monitoring while enhancing FLE-manager trust and FLE-manager identification.

Role conflict is inevitable in a service job and can have serious negative downstream consequences. Hence, the study explores the important contextual factors that can help an organization develop policies to reduce the negative effects of role conflict.

This study investigates the mediating role of consumer engagement (CE) in the relationship between perceived behavioral control (PBC) and purchase intent and the moderating role of perceived safety in the relationship between PBC and CE in the self-driving car (SDC) context.

To test the model, a sample of 368 consumers was deployed using partial least-squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM).

The findings reveal that consumers' SDC engagement mediates the relationship between PBC and their intent to purchase an SDC. Consumer-perceived SDC safety also moderates the association of PBC/engagement.

While prior research has examined consumer-based drivers of SDC adoption, understanding of consumers' SDC engagement-related dynamics and outcomes lags behind. Addressing this gap, we propose and test a model that explores consumers' SDC engagement vis-à-vis its drivers (perceived SDC safety/behavioral control) and outcomes (SDC purchase intent).