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Social influence on salespeople’s adoption of sales technology: a multilevel analysis

  • Original Empirical Research
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Abstract

The implementation of sales force automation applications (SFA) often fails owing to the lack of adoption by salespeople. Previous studies investigating drivers of salespeople’s SFA adoption have mainly scrutinized predictors on the level of salespeople (within-level analysis). Hence, these studies have mostly neglected the social influence of coworkers’ and superiors’ SFA adoption on salespeople’s SFA adoption. We introduce a new perspective using a multilevel framework of SFA adoption at several hierarchical levels. The findings demonstrate that coworkers’ and superiors’ SFA adoption has a positive effect on subordinates’ SFA adoption which goes beyond the commonly tested determinants. Also, results reveal differences among predictors of the Technology Acceptance Model (within-level effects) examined at three different hierarchical levels.

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Notes

  1. Our theory and empirical models assume a unidirectional causal relationship between the sales manager’s SFA adoption and salespeople’s SFA adoption. To test the possibility of reversed causality we calculated a nonrecursive model with both paths tested simultaneously. This procedure is applicable if there is an additional exogenous variable that correlates with one of the predictors and not with the other (Kline 2005). In principle, any variable that explains variance in the one but not the other latent factor can be used. Organizational identification of the manager (we used one item “When I talk about [organization’s name], I usually say ‘we’ rather than ‘they’”) proved to be such a variable; it was significantly related to sales manager’s SFA adoption but not to salespeople’s SFA adoption. Using AMOS 16.0 we calculated a model with sales manager’s SFA adoption and salespeople’s SFA adoption as latent variables. Finally, we entered organizational identification of the manager as the additional exogenous variable. As predicted, the path from sales manager’s SFA adoption to salespeople’s SFA adoption was significantly larger (ß = .38, p < .01), than the opposite path (ß = .04, n.s.). Finally, a model with a path from sales manager’s SFA adoption to salespeople’s SFA adoption fits much better than one with a path from salespeople’s SFA adoption to sales manager’s SFA adoption (1, Δχ2 = 7,97).

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Acknowledgments

This work was supported by the German National Science Fund (WI 3146/1-2).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Marketing Department I, University of Mannheim, Schloss, D-68131, Mannheim, Germany

    Christian Homburg & Christina Kuehnl

  2. Ruhr-University of Bochum, GC 4/162, 44780, Bochum, Germany

    Jan Wieseke

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  1. Christian Homburg
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  2. Jan Wieseke
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  3. Christina Kuehnl
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Correspondence to Christian Homburg.

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Christian Homburg, Jan Wieseke and Christina Kuehnl contributed equally to this manuscript.

Appendix

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Table 2

Table 2 Scale items for construct measurement
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Homburg, C., Wieseke, J. & Kuehnl, C. Social influence on salespeople’s adoption of sales technology: a multilevel analysis. J. of the Acad. Mark. Sci. 38, 159–168 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11747-009-0157-x

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