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Salesperson performance is accepted as a relevant factor of retailing success. However, scarce studies reveal the relationship between sales performance and brand relationship. The purpose of this study is both, from one side, to empirically demonstrate the impact of salesperson brand attachment (SBA) on sales performance and, on the other side, to identify the mediators of this relationship in small retailing.

A survey was conducted with a sample of 206 small retailers from different sectors of an emerging country. The proposed model was tested using partial least squares–structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) in SmartPLS3.

The results demonstrated that SBA is relevant to driving sales performance through two relevant paths – one following SBA–satisfaction–performance and one path following the SBA–commitment–performance. The model was able to explain 63% of the outcome performance.

Regarding small retailers, where the owners, employees and managers have higher levels of interaction than the large national retail chains, the marketing executives must invest in improving the attachment to the brand and create emotional bonds and cognition between marketers and the brand. They must develop strategies to promote job satisfaction and organizational commitment because they determine performance.

Despite the relevance of small businesses for economies worldwide and the importance of salesperson brand relationships, no study has been developed to demonstrate the impacts of such relationships on salesperson performance in retailing. Furthermore, in addition to the central role of organizational commitment in the sales research, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study to explore how to mediate the relationship between brand attachment and sales performance.

El rendimiento del vendedor se acepta como un factor relevante para el éxito del comercio minorista. Sin embargo, los estudios que revelan la relación entre el resultado de las ventas y la relación con la marca son escasos. El propósito de este estudio es, por un lado, demostrar empíricamente el impacto del apego a la marca del vendedor (SBA) en el resultado de las ventas y, por otro lado, identificar los mediadores de esta relación en el comercio minorista.

Se realizó una encuesta con una muestra de 206 vendedores de pequeños minoristas provenientes de diferentes sectores de un país emergente. El modelo estructural se analizó mediante ecuaciones estructurales basada en mínimos cuadrados (PLS-SEM) utilizando SmartPLS3.

Los resultados mostraron que el SBA es esencial para impulsar el resultado de las ventas a través de dos caminos relevantes: uno siguiendo el SBA-satisfacción-rendimiento y la otra dirección siguiendo el SBA-compromiso-rendimiento. El modelo fue capaz de explicar el 63% del rendimiento.

Con respecto a los pequeños minoristas, donde los propietarios, empleados y gerentes tienen niveles más altos de interacción que las grandes cadenas minoristas nacionales, los ejecutivos de marketing deben invertir en mejorar el apego a la marca y crear vínculos emocionales y cognitivos entre los vendedores y la marca. Deben desarrollar estrategias para promover la satisfacción laboral y el compromiso organizacional ya que determinan el rendimiento.

A pesar de la relevancia de las pequeñas empresas para las economías de todo el mundo y la importancia de las relaciones de marca en los vendedores, no se ha desarrollado ningún estudio para demostrar los impactos de tales relaciones en el rendimiento de los vendedores en el comercio minorista. Además, aparte del papel central del compromiso organizacional en la investigación en ventas, este es el primer estudio que explora cómo media la relación entre el apego a la marca y el resultado de las ventas.

The purpose of this study is to provide an in-depth understanding of the B2B customers’ perspective regarding salespeople’s social media use.

The study adopts a qualitative approach based on semi-structured interviews with 26 key informants performing their job in customer role in various industries.

The authors inductively identify five themes regarding the B2B customers’ perspective of social media use in B2B selling. These themes allow for valuable implications for social selling activities and expected outcomes.

Against a growing body of literature on drivers, best practices and outcomes of social media use by B2B salespeople, less attention has been paid to the customer’s side. The authors extend current research by providing a more complete picture of social selling activities and expected outcomes.

Vendors’ social cues – physical or behavioural hints – have an impact on the professional buyer. However, little is known about that impact. The purpose of this paper is to place knowledge about the impact of social cues that other disciplines acquired in the context of business-to-business (B2B) marketing to contribute constructively to the research agenda.

By integrating findings on the processing of social cues and the behavioural response from the disciplines of neuroscience, biology and psychology (specifically the behavioural inhibition system [BIS]/behavioural activation system [BAS]-theory), this paper aims to provide an interdisciplinary perspective on the automatic evaluation of vendors by professional buyers.

Social cues are likely to be of substantial value in the (first) encounter between buyer and seller. Positively evaluated social cues create an approach-motivated behavioural intention, whereas negatively evaluated ones create avoidance. This process is probably predominantly mediated by trust and moderated by personality and contextual factors.

This paper stimulates research about the impact of social cues in a B2B context. While such knowledge would add practical value, this paper also explores possibilities for managers to use neuroscientific techniques to assess and train sales agents.

The impact of social cues is hardly covered in the B2B marketing literature, but they have an important impact on B2B decision-making. The conceptual framework combines the BIS/BAS theory (approach/avoidance) with the SOR-model (stimulus-organism-response), which is unique to the B2B marketing field.

The purpose of this paper is to offer a comprehensive overview of current research on customer behavior in the business-to-business (B2B) context and propose a research agenda for future studies. Despite being a relatively recent area of interest for academics and practitioners, a literature review that synthesizes existing knowledge into coherent topics and outlines a research agenda for future research is still lacking.

Drawing on a systematic literature review of 219 papers and using a text-mining approach based on the Latent Dirichlet Allocation algorithm, this paper enhances the existing knowledge of B2B customer behavior and provides a descriptive analysis of the literature.

From this review, ten major research topics are found and analyzed. These topics were analyzed through the lens of the Theory, Context, Characteristics and Method framework, providing a summary of key findings from prior studies. Additionally, an integrative framework was developed, offering insights into future research directions.

This study presents a novel contribution to the field of B2B by providing a systematic review of the topic of customer behavior, filling a gap in the literature and offering a valuable resource for scholars and managers seeking to advance the field.

This study aimed to examine the digital transformation of business-to-business (B2B) sales and its effects on the management of value-based selling.

The study adopted a qualitative interview research design. A total of two participant groups—one consisting of sales management professionals and the other consisting of buyers—were created to conduct abductive data analysis to gain a new understanding of B2B sales management.

As a result of the digital transformation of sales, companies are shifting B2B sales towards value-based selling using a more proactive, continuous process wherein digital value co-creation activities play a big role. Similarly, their buyers now expect more proactive communication about new value propositions, but social media channels are of little importance to most B2B buyers. The management of digital value co-creation activities should be addressed from the sales ecosystem perspective, where non-sellers tend to have a strong role in communicating new value propositions.

There needs to be further research on digital value co-creation activities in the sales ecosystem, as value-based selling requires that selling organizations focus more on educational digital content marketing and engagement with non-sellers via both marketing and sales activities.

Companies rarely exploit experts and project personnel when implementing digital sales strategies; however, they often meet with customers personally and network with them. This requires a broader perspective on sales management.

This is one of the first studies to explore the management of value-based selling from both seller and buyer perspectives.

The purpose of this paper is to explore how business-to-business (B2B), intercultural, interpersonal salesperson–customer relationships develop using the lens of identity management theory (IMT; Imahori and Cupach, 2005).

The research uses qualitative semi-structured interviews on 18 targeted relationships with customers from another culture conducted with business-to-business salespeople.

The findings indicate that our respondents' relationships moved from trial toward enmeshment and on occasion toward the renegotiation phase, as described in IMT. In the case of low cultural diversity between salesperson and customer, the relationships reached the trial and enmeshment phase. In the case of high cultural diversity between salesperson and customer, the relationships on occasion evolved toward the renegotiation phase. Salespeople's cultural intelligence (CQ) facilitates the development of interpersonal, intercultural salesperson–customer relationships.

The authors transfer IMT from the personal relationship development arena to B2B intercultural, interpersonal relationships, address a gap in the literature in the understanding of salesperson–customer interpersonal relationships in different contexts and develop a theoretical model to understand intercultural, interpersonal salesperson–customer relationship development across different levels of cultural diversity.