Date of Award

2017

Document Type

Dissertation - Rollins Access Only

Degree Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Business Administration (DBA)

Advisor(s)

Dr. William C. Moncrief, III

Second Advisor

Dr. Craig McAllaster

Abstract

Social media has become one of the tactics used in the promotional element in Marketing. The business-to-business sales function has used this tool to assist the efforts of the salesforce. Previous research has developed a list of activities used by salespeople in their routines, no studies have compiled one that details social media activities used in a business-to-business salespeople’s daily sales routine. The focus of the research was on discovering and developing a list of social media activities that are used by business-to-business salespeople, how frequently they use the social media activities, the value they place in them, and the demographic effects of the activities and the social media platforms. Once the focus groups compiled the list of social media activities, the list was put into a survey and distributed by Qualtrics to business-to-business salespeople via e-mail. The salespeople represented the major industries, Construction, Manufacturing, Retail Products, and Finance/Insurance were a few of the ones represented. Of the 515 respondents, 383 indicated they use social media in their daily sales routines. The results were analyzed using factor analysis, one way ANOVA’s, descriptive statistics, correlations, and crosstabs. From these results, the major findings were the list of social media activities used by the salesperson in their daily sales routine, the factor analysis that uncovered the seven factors of frequency, the eight factors from the value scale, the comparative analysis of the social media activities and the seven steps in the sales process, and the comparative study of the demographic factors and the preferred social media platform. The list of social media activities is factored down to categories of social media activities. A comparative analysis of the social media activities and the steps in the sales process provided results that uncovered an opaqueness to the alignment of the two. The demographic comparisons of the frequency and perceived value of the social media activities highlight the social media platforms where business-to-business salespeople are directing their efforts.

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