Investigating the Impact of Salespersons’ Use of Technology and Social Media on Their Customer Relationship Performance in B2B Settings

Purpose – Salespeople have had a long affair with technology in serving customers. Some research studies, however, indicate that too much technology may have a negative impact on salespeople’s social skills. This paper aims to analyze what impact technology – specifically, social media, in terms of attitudes and use – has on selling performance.Design/Methodology/Approach – In a sample of salespeople from different business-to-business (B2B) industries, respondents were surveyed in the form of face-to-face interviews that were conducted at their place of work. The study analyzed how the intensity of technology use, attitudes towards and the use of social media affect customer relationship performance. Variance-based structural equation modeling, especially PLS-SEM, was applied for the analysis. Findings and implications – According to the results of this study, the effects of intensive technology use on social media attitude and use, as well as on customer relationship performance, are verified. The objective of this research, namely, to understand the influence of technology use and social media attitude and use on selling performance, has been partly achieved: the presumed positive theoretical connection between social media and performance is not trivial, although company managers should be aware the risks involved with the application of technology in sales.Limitations – These results highlight that, if the focus is solely on social media, the effects of social media attitude and social media use on customer relationship performance are limited, and their explanatory power is relatively low. Therefore, a business model that focuses solely on customer retention mostly through the increased use of social media seems to have serious limitations.This study suffers from further limitations, such as small sample size and the exploratory nature of the research. Moreover, the findings are derived from perceived constructs and not from actual behavior.Originality – The analysis of technology and social media is new in the current context. With the large scale of social media use being a relatively new phenomenon, this study can presumably provide a new understanding of social media in the selling environment.