期刊
INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF RESEARCH IN MARKETING
卷 39, 期 4, 页码 1235-1252出版社
ELSEVIER
DOI: 10.1016/j.ijresmar.2022.03.001
关键词
Servitized offerings; Industrial service share; Salesperson factors; Transaction cost theory; Personal selling
类别
资金
- German Research Foundation - DFG [AL 1834/5-1]
Business-to-business companies differentiate themselves by complementing goods with services. Existing literature highlights the benefits of servitization and the significance of the sales force, but empirical research on the negative impact and barriers of selling servitized offerings at the salesperson level is scarce.
Business-to-business companies often differentiate themselves from competitors by complementing goods with services. While extant literature on servitization points to substantial benefits for companies and underscores the importance of the sales force for successful servitization, it has rarely empirically investigated the negative effects of and barriers to effective selling of servitized offerings at the salesperson level. Drawing on transaction cost theory, we propose that with rising service shares, the specificity of offers and transaction costs grow, partially offsetting the financial benefits. We derive four salesperson factors that moderate the effect of salespeople's industrial service share on salespeople's profit. These factors pertain to the extent to which salespeople individualize offers and effectively manage offers' specificity (adaptiveness, customer valuation skills, experience). We test our conceptualization with data from 220 salespeople and company records. The results are robust to endogeneity and show that service share has a diminishing positive effect on salesperson profit. While salespersons' offer individualization enforces this harmful effect, salesperson adaptiveness and customer valuation skills show beneficial moderating effects. This study provides valuable insights for researchers and managers into the role of the sales force in servitization and into salesperson factors conducive to realizing the full profit potential of servitized offerings. (c) 2022 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
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