The Adoption of Information Technology in the Sales Force

Schillewaert, Niels; Ahearne, Michael; Frambach, Ruud T.; Moenaert, Rudy

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The Adoption of Information Technology in the Sales Force

Industrial Marketing Management, Vol. 34, No. 4, pp. 323-336, 2005

Posted: 6 Apr 2010 Last revised: 6 Aug 2014

See all articles by Niels Schillewaert

Michael Ahearne

University of Houston - C.T. Bauer College of Business

Rudy Moenaert

affiliation not provided to SSRN

Date Written: 2005

Abstract

The purpose of this article is to explain why salespeople adopt information technology. The results from a cross-sectional study of 229 salespeople indicate that putting sales technology to use strongly depends on salespeople’s perceptions about the technology enhancing their performance, their personal innovativeness and organizational efforts in terms of user training. Throughout the adoption process companies also need to target sales line managers – next to end users – because salespeople clearly comply with the expectations of their supervisors. Finally, the threat from competing sales professionals or peers who use similar sales technology seems to be of secondary importance for individual sales technology adoption.

Keywords: Technology adoption, Sales management, Innovativeness

JEL Classification: M30, O30

Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation

Schillewaert, Niels and Ahearne, Michael and Frambach, Ruud T. and Moenaert, Rudy, The Adoption of Information Technology in the Sales Force (2005). Industrial Marketing Management, Vol. 34, No. 4, pp. 323-336, 2005, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=1584740