دانلود رایگان مقاله انگلیسی موقعیت خوب نیروی فروش: تاثیر ادغام نیروی فروش در موفقیت محصول جدید - الزویر 2017

Abstract

Spanning the boundary between the organization and external market participants, the sales force is in an advantaged position to garner unique market insights. At the same time the sales force has a pivotal role in bringing new products to the market as vendors following their own adoption. The present study reunites the literature that has previously considered the sales force either in their role as facilitators of market insights or as vendors of new products by proposing a mediating effects framework that explicitly examines the sales force in their dual role. Data collected from 609 firms provide evidence that the utilization of the sales force‟s insights for new product development, referred to as sales force integration, engenders new product success. The authors focus in particular on the examination of the input-output transformation process by studying multiple mediation paths through which sales force integration brings about new product success via new product advantages and sales force new product adoption. The effectiveness of sales force integration is highly contingent upon factors including information quality, timing, non-monetary sales force incentives, innovation degree, and competitive intensity. This study discusses how managers should act to fully benefit from the impact of sales force integration on new product success.

5. Discussion

The present research provides empirical evidence that incorporating sales force information into NPD processes engenders new product success. We demonstrate the sales force's pivotal role as boundary spanners between the organization and external market players and thereby ascertain sales force integration as a key determining factor of new product success. Our research pinpoints the unique impact that the consideration of salespeople's market insights has in the realm of NPD and it is the first study that sheds light on the mechanisms by which sales force integration exerts its impact on new product success in a sales context.

We find that sales force integration affects new product success via two separate routes. First, the utilization of salespeople‟s market knowledge in NPD supports firms in developing new products that are better aligned with customer needs and, thus, provide superior benefits in the eyes of customers. These new product advantages favor the adoption of new products by customers, and consequently, lead to higher levels of new product success. With the validation of this first route, our study establishes the fact that the sales force constitutes a unique and valuable knowledge repository that represents a decisive strategic resource and that serves as the basis for the creation of knowledge-based competitive advantages and enhanced company success when integrated internally (Felin and Hesterly 2007; Grant 1996a).