بررسی نقش فناوری CRM مبتنی بر فروش و استفاده از رسانه های اجتماعی در رفتارهای خدمات پس از فروش در هند Examining the role of sales-based CRM technology and social media use on post-sale service behaviors in India

1. Introduction The strategic importance of the sales force and the role it plays in driving revenue generation has been well documented (Cron, Baldauf, Leigh, & Grossenbacher, 2014; Palmatier, Scheer, & Steenkamp, 2007), however more research that explores the role of the salesperson in the value creation process, especially after closing the sale, is needed (Terho, Haas, Eggert, & Ulaga, 2012). Moreover, the sales technology literature has primarily focused on the effect of antecedents on sales technology use (Hunter & Perreault, 2007; Jelinek, Ahearne, Mathieu, & Schillewaert, 2006) and how technology adoption helps a salesperson secure the sale and enhance performance (Rodriguez, Peterson, & Krishnan, 2012). Although scholars argue the long-term importance of sales technology (Rapp, Agnihotri, & Forbes, 2008; Tanner, Ahearne, Leigh, Mason, & Moncrief, 2005), to the best of our knowledge, no research study has examined the impact of technology in the context of salesperson service behaviors (SSBs). The goal of this research, therefore, is to address this gap in the literature by doing two things. First, we investigate the effect of salesbased CRM technology on SSBs. The SSB perspective (as proposed by Ahearne, Jelinek, & Jones, 2007) and the extant sales literature on CRM technology provide the foundation for building and empirically testing a model relating CRM technology to SSBs. It is important to mention that “service behaviors” in the current context do not refer to behaviors a salesperson practices to close initial sales. Instead, it refers to behaviors salespeople employ after the point of the initial sale (Ahearne et al., 2007). Second, we expand the domain of sales technology by including social media to the extent that it will interact with sales-based CRM technology to positively influence SSBs. Our approach is aligned with the sales literature that broadly defines sales technology as the set of technology tools that can be used by salespeople to enhance efficiency and effectiveness when dealing with customers (Jelinek, 2013). Notably, different types of sales technology tools have different applications and effects (Agnihotri, Kothandaraman, Kashyap, & Singh, 2012; Hunter & Perreault, 2007; Rapp et al., 2008). The use of social media as an added technological tool in the sales technology toolbox is still a novel concept, and sales organizations often do not have a firm-wide social media sales strategy (Agnihotri, Dingus, Hu, & Krush, 2016; Gupta, Armstrong, & Clayton, 2010). Sales technology researchers suggest that social media technologies are not a replacement for existing sales technology but are instead complementary to existing sales technology and “augment the value of each interaction with the customer, existing or future” (Andzulis, Panagopoulos, & Rapp, 2012, p. 308). Building from this, we examine the moderating effects of social media in our model.