Résumé : |
Sales Force Automation systems (SFA) enable enhancing productivity, communication and customer relationships. SFA research has focused on the issues of adoption and diffusion of SFA tools and on their impact on salesperson’s performance. Yet, no research has sought to study the benefits of these applications from a customer’s perspective. Following a thorough literature review, we conduct a qualitative study among buyers to identify perceived benefits linked to the use of SFA systems by their vendors. We combine three analytical methods, i.e., thematic content analysis, lexical analysis and cognitive mapping to uncover the most valued perceived benefits. Results suggest that customers benefit from the use of SFA solutions on four main dimensions: salespeople’s professionalism, interaction quality, responsiveness and salesperson-customer relationship quality. |