The extent of technology usage and salespeople: an exploratory investigation

Purpose – Increasingly, salespeople adopt, or are being asked to adopt, and use a variety of technologies to increase their selling productivity and efficiency. Given this trend, many researchers have begun to explore the question of sales force adoption of technology. However, little work has been done to consider what happens once this technology is adopted. The purpose of this paper is to report two studies that investigated if and why salespeople had different technology usage and if the extent of usage had an impact on their performance. Design/methodology/approach – First, a qualitative study was performed to gain insights about extent of technology usage and the reasons that may explain differences. In order to test some of the research propositions that emerged from the qualitative study, an empirical study was conducted with 130 salespeople. Findings – Innovativeness was found to be helpful in distinguishing between different technology usage levels across various technologies (internet, e‐mail, intranet, etc.). Results also suggest three potential antecedents of technology use, as well as a potential moderator of the usage to performance relationship. Originality/value – This paper provides a research agenda for studying this important area. Further, the practicing manager will gain insight into some variables that help predict usage extent, and may provide better ideas on implementing and managing the use of technology by their sales force.