CONTRIBUTION OF SOCIAL MEDIA USE AND CULTURAL INTELLIGENCE OF SALESPERSON TO CUSTOMER QUALIFICATION SKILLS, ADAPTIVE SELLING BEHAVIORS AND SALES PERFORMANCE: THE ​CASE OF EXPORT SALESPERSONS IN CHINA

Abstract

With the wide popularity of social media in business and life, there is an increasing trend of social media use in sales in recent years. In international business, social media play an important role in overcoming the time and space barriers between export salespeople and foreign buyers. However, due to the emergence of social media in about a decade, academic research about social media use in sales is lagging behind practice. In particular, scarce research has explored the topic in international business. To fill this void, this study aimed to investigate whether and how export salespeople’s social media use could contribute to sales performance. In addition, in view of the effectiveness of cultural intelligence in cross-cultural settings, this study regarded it as an important factor in the context of export selling via social media and aimed to examine its effectiveness in this non-face-to-face cross-cultural settings. The main objective of the study was to investigate the impact of social media use in sales and cultural intelligence on salesperson’s outcome performance and relationship performance. Drawing on adaptive selling theory, categorization theory and Social Customer Relationship Management framework, this study proposed that adaptive selling behaviors and customer qualification skills could be mediating factors which would explain the possible impact of social media use in sales and cultural intelligence on salesperson’s outcome performance and relationship performance. In addition, this study explored the impact of cultural intelligence on customer qualification skills and adaptive selling behaviors as well. This study adopted a questionnaire survey method to collect data from a sampling framework of 24,191 export salespeople in China. 966 responses were usable for analysis. Results from partial least square analysis showed that social media use in sales was positively associated with relationship performance, but this positive relationship was not statistically supported. Cultural intelligence was found to have a statistically supported positive association with salesperson’s outcome performance and relationship performance. Social media use in sales and cultural intelligence were found to be positively associated with customer qualification skills and adaptive selling behaviors, which were statistically supported. In addition, the total effect analysis showed that customer qualification skills and adaptive selling behaviors were significant factors which explained why export salespeople who used social media in sales and owned high cultural intelligence could reap good outcome performance and relationship performance. Research findings added to sales literature, social media literature and cultural intelligence literature. In view of the research findings, it is recommended that export salespeople and sales organizations that aim to enhance salesperson’s performance in export selling via social media need to note that social media use alone is not sufficient to generate direct benefits for them. Salespeople need to integrate characteristics of social media in different sales processes to improve their customer qualification skills and adaptive selling behaviors so that they can reap ideal sales performance. Meanwhile, sales organizations and sales people also need to realize the importance of cultures of foreign customers particularly in cross-cultural selling. Therefore, they also need to develop the ability to understand and to respond effectively in cross-cultural sales situations to enhance their chance to gain superior performance in export selling.