La influencia de la digitalización de la fuerza de ventas en la recuperación de clientes en mercados B2B

Abstract

1. Thesis Objectives The importance of implementing customer recovery strategies to achieving sustainable growth in organizations is key. Considering that the probability of selling to a lost customer is higher than selling to a new customer (Griffin and Lowenstein, M.W., 2002) and the return on investment is greater when recovering customers compared to acquiring new ones (Stauss and Friege, 1999), current literature should focus on strategies for recovering lost customers. The first objective of this study is to investigate the influence of digital tools on customer recovery strategies. The second objective, it examines the antecedents of salesperson characteristics, such as innovation in sales digitalization and environmental factors, as well as management support. The third objective is to analyze the primary consequences related to objective and subjective salesperson results, along with the secondary consequences of salesperson satisfaction in customer recovery. 2. Methodology In this research, we have adopted a mixed-methods design (Tashakkori and Creswell, 2007), which combines both qualitative and quantitative approaches to study the research subject in this case, customer recovery by salespeople in B2B environments. The study uses data gathered through in-depth interviews with sellers and online surveys. This method allows a greater understanding by combining qualitative results (preliminary and follow-up interviews) and quantitative results (online survey responses). In the first phase of the qualitative research, 22 interviews were conducted (3 exploratory interviews in the first phase, 14 in-depth interviews in the second phase, and 5 in-depth interviews in the third phase) to explore customer recovery in the B2B market, with qualitative analysis of the responses. In the second part of the study, a survey was conducted on various aspects of customer recovery with a final sample of 181 salespeople. The results were then analyzed using structural equation modeling. 3. Results The results confirmed that both innovation in sales digitalization and management support, as well as the perceived usefulness of CRM, positively influence both distributive and interactional recovery actions. However, the usefulness of social networks positively influences distributive recovery actions but not interactional recovery actions. The relationships between the antecedents included in the model were confirmed, where both innovation in sales digitalization and management support positively influenced the perception of the usefulness of digital tools, such as CRM and social networks, by salespeople. Distributive justice actions and their antecedents were confirmed in all cases, while in interactional justice recovery actions, the relationship with the perceived usefulness of social networks was not confirmed. No relationships were confirmed between distributive justice actions and the subjective and objective performance of salespeople. However, both relationships were confirmed in the case of interactional justice actions. Regarding the consequences, it was confirmed that the objective results of the salesperson have a positive influence on their subjective performance in customer recovery strategies. In the relationship between primary and secondary consequences, the positive influence of both objective and subjective results on salesperson satisfaction in customer recovery was confirmed.