IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/jbrese/v154y2023ics0148296322008086.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The effect of inside sales and hybrid sales structures on customer value creation

Author

Listed:
  • Ramos, Carla
  • Claro, Danny P.
  • Germiniano, Renato

Abstract

As business-to-business (B2B) sales become digital and multichannel, firms develop inside sales (IS) channels to serve customers and combine such channels with outside sales (OS) and distributor channels in new sales structures. Although IS may offer gains, extant research lacks empirical evidence on their effectiveness in customer value creation when used independently – discrete structures – and in combination with OS and distributors – hybrid structures. This study aims to assess the value creation performance of IS in discrete and hybrid structures. Results from regression estimations of 13,210 B2B customers over two years in a single-firm research design unveil how IS increase value creation when used independently; yet, using IS together with OS or distributors in hybrid structures, decreases performance. IS are more effective in historically less valuable customers and less complex sales processes. This study advances knowledge on multichannel IS structures’ effectiveness in value creation, helping sales managers allocating resources across channels.

Suggested Citation

  • Ramos, Carla & Claro, Danny P. & Germiniano, Renato, 2023. "The effect of inside sales and hybrid sales structures on customer value creation," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 154(C).
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:jbrese:v:154:y:2023:i:c:s0148296322008086
    DOI: 10.1016/j.jbusres.2022.113343
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0148296322008086
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.jbusres.2022.113343?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Wolfgang Ulaga & Wim Biemans & Jeffrey E. Lewin, 2010. "Firm downsizing and satisfaction among United States and European customers," Post-Print hal-00528407, HAL.
    2. Erin Anderson, 2008. "The Salesperson as Outside Agent or Employee: A Transaction Cost Analysis," Marketing Science, INFORMS, vol. 27(1), pages 70-84, 01-02.
    3. Watson, George F. & Worm, Stefan & Palmatier, Robert W. & Ganesan, Shankar, 2015. "The Evolution of Marketing Channels: Trends and Research Directions," Journal of Retailing, Elsevier, vol. 91(4), pages 546-568.
    4. Rutherford, Brian N. & Marshall, Greg W. & Park, JungKun, 2014. "The moderating effects of gender and inside versus outside sales role in multifaceted job satisfaction," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 67(9), pages 1850-1856.
    5. David J. Teece & Gary Pisano & Amy Shuen, 1997. "Dynamic capabilities and strategic management," Strategic Management Journal, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 18(7), pages 509-533, August.
    6. Lewin, Jeffrey E. & Biemans, Wim & Ulaga, Wolfgang, 2010. "Firm downsizing and satisfaction among United States and European customers," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 63(7), pages 697-706, July.
    7. Guenzi, Paolo & Troilo, Gabriele, 2007. "The joint contribution of marketing and sales to the creation of superior customer value," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 60(2), pages 98-107, February.
    8. Kathleen M. Eisenhardt & Jeffrey A. Martin, 2000. "Dynamic capabilities: what are they?," Strategic Management Journal, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 21(10‐11), pages 1105-1121, October.
    9. Verhoef, Peter C. & Kannan, P.K. & Inman, J. Jeffrey, 2015. "From Multi-Channel Retailing to Omni-Channel Retailing," Journal of Retailing, Elsevier, vol. 91(2), pages 174-181.
    10. Jeffrey M Wooldridge, 2010. "Econometric Analysis of Cross Section and Panel Data," MIT Press Books, The MIT Press, edition 2, volume 1, number 0262232588, April.
    11. Rangarajan, Deva & Sharma, Arun & Lyngdoh, Teidorlang & Paesbrugghe, Bert, 2021. "Business-to-business selling in the post-COVID-19 era: Developing an adaptive sales force," Business Horizons, Elsevier, vol. 64(5), pages 647-658.
    12. Gabriel R. Gonzalez & Danny P. Claro, 2019. "How intrafirm intermediary salespeople connect sales to marketing and product development," Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, Springer, vol. 47(5), pages 795-814, September.
    13. Claro, Danny P. & Ramos, Carla & Gonzalez, Gabriel R. & Palmatier, Robert W., 2020. "Dynamic effects of newcomer salespersons' peer relational exchanges and structures on performance," International Journal of Research in Marketing, Elsevier, vol. 37(1), pages 74-92.
    14. Frédéric Dalsace & William T. Ross & Erin Anderson, 2005. "Should you set up your own sales force or should you outsource it? Pitfalls in the standard analysis," Post-Print hal-00457733, HAL.
    15. Ohiomah, Alhassan & Andreev, Pavel & Benyoucef, Morad & Hood, David, 2019. "The role of lead management systems in inside sales performance," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 102(C), pages 163-177.
    16. Ross, William Jr. & Dalsace, Frederic & Anderson, Erin, 2005. "Should you set up your own sales force or should you outsource it? Pitfalls in the standard analysis," Business Horizons, Elsevier, vol. 48(1), pages 23-36.
    17. Arun Sharma & Deva Rangarajan & Bert Paesbrugghe, 2020. "Increasing resilience by creating an adaptive salesforce," Post-Print hal-03136152, HAL.
    18. Rapp, Adam & Beitelspacher, Lauren Skinner & Schillewaert, Niels & Baker, Thomas L., 2012. "The differing effects of technology on inside vs. outside sales forces to facilitate enhanced customer orientation and interfunctional coordination," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 65(7), pages 929-936.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Badrinarayanan, Vishag & Ramachandran, Indu, 2024. "Relational exchanges in the sales domain: A review and research agenda through the lens of commitment-trust theory of relationship marketing," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 177(C).

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Haarhaus, Tim & Liening, Andreas, 2020. "Building dynamic capabilities to cope with environmental uncertainty: The role of strategic foresight," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 155(C).
    2. Garcés-Ayerbe, Concepción & Cañón-de-Francia, Joaquín, 2017. "The Relevance of Complementarities in the Study of the Economic Consequences of Environmental Proactivity: Analysis of the Moderating Effect of Innovation Efforts," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 142(C), pages 21-30.
    3. Giacosa, Elisa & Culasso, Francesca & Crocco, Edoardo, 2022. "Customer agility in the modern automotive sector: how lead management shapes agile digital companies," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 175(C).
    4. Gallucci, Carmen & Santulli, Rosalia & Calabrò, Andrea, 2015. "Does family involvement foster or hinder firm performance? The missing role of family-based branding strategies," Journal of Family Business Strategy, Elsevier, vol. 6(3), pages 155-165.
    5. Zorn, Michelle L. & Norman, Patricia M. & Butler, Frank C. & Bhussar, Manjot S., 2017. "Cure or curse: Does downsizing increase the likelihood of bankruptcy?," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 76(C), pages 24-33.
    6. Achi, Awele & Adeola, Ogechi & Achi, Francis Chukwuedo, 2022. "CSR and green process innovation as antecedents of micro, small, and medium enterprise performance: Moderating role of perceived environmental volatility," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 139(C), pages 771-781.
    7. Guerrero, Maribel & Siegel, Donald S., 2024. "Schumpeter meets Teece: Proposed metrics for assessing entrepreneurial innovation and dynamic capabilities in entrepreneurial ecosystems in an emerging economy," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 53(5).
    8. Deszczyński, Bartosz & Beręsewicz, Maciej, 2021. "The maturity of relationship management and firm performance – A step toward relationship management middle-range theory," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 135(C), pages 358-372.
    9. Marcello Sansone & Roberto Bruni & Annarita Colamatteo & Maria Anna Pagnanelli, 2017. "Dynamic capabilities in retailers? marketing strategies: Defining an analysis model," MERCATI & COMPETITIVIT?, FrancoAngeli Editore, vol. 2017(2), pages 17-42.
    10. Rodrigo-Alarcón, Job & García-Villaverde, Pedro M. & Ruiz-Ortega, María J. & Parra-Requena, Gloria, 2018. "From social capital to entrepreneurial orientation: The mediating role of dynamic capabilities," European Management Journal, Elsevier, vol. 36(2), pages 195-209.
    11. Majumdar, Sumit K., 2014. "Technology and wages: Why firms invest and what happens," Technology in Society, Elsevier, vol. 39(C), pages 44-54.
    12. Feng, Cong & Fay, Scott, 2020. "Store Closings and Retailer Profitability: A Contingency Perspective," Journal of Retailing, Elsevier, vol. 96(3), pages 411-433.
    13. Xiang, Dong & Chen, Jiakui & Tripe, David & Zhang, Ning, 2019. "Family firms, sustainable innovation and financing cost: Evidence from Chinese hi-tech small and medium-sized enterprises," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 144(C), pages 499-511.
    14. Jingoo Kang & Sang‐Joon Kim, 2020. "Performance implications of incremental transition and discontinuous jump between exploration and exploitation," Strategic Management Journal, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 41(6), pages 1083-1111, June.
    15. Kyuho Jin, 2022. "Can Business Groups Survive Institutional Advancements? Examining the Role of Internal Market for Non-Tradable, Intangible Assets," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 14(17), pages 1-17, September.
    16. Sebastian Forkmann & Ryan Mullins & Stephan C. Henneberg & Thomas L. Baker, 2022. "Choreographing salesperson face-to-face visits with a buyer organization: a social network perspective," Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, Springer, vol. 50(3), pages 615-638, May.
    17. Perna, Andrea & Cardinali, Silvio & Gregori, Gian Luca, 2013. "Coping with alternatives in sales organisations: Experiences from an Italian company," jbm - Journal of Business Market Management, Free University Berlin, Marketing Department, vol. 6(3), pages 107-122.
    18. Tobias Knabke & Sebastian Olbrich, 2018. "Building novel capabilities to enable business intelligence agility: results from a quantitative study," Information Systems and e-Business Management, Springer, vol. 16(3), pages 493-546, August.
    19. FeCheng Ma & Farhan Khan & Kashif Ullah Khan & Si XiangYun, 2021. "Investigating the Impact of Information Technology, Absorptive Capacity, and Dynamic Capabilities on Firm Performance: An Empirical Study," SAGE Open, , vol. 11(4), pages 21582440211, November.
    20. Dominik M. Wielgos & Christian Homburg & Christina Kuehnl, 2021. "Digital business capability: its impact on firm and customer performance," Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, Springer, vol. 49(4), pages 762-789, July.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:jbrese:v:154:y:2023:i:c:s0148296322008086. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/jbusres .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.