Abstract

IT-supported service innovations attract considerable interest as drivers of competitive advantage in a business-to-business (B2B) context. Sales managers are in need of insights regarding how to set up their selling centers (SC) with regard to SC’s heterogeneity of expertise and values to raise the success of new services. However, literature in the area of SC heterogeneity in relationship with service innovations is scarce. Noting the increasing practical relevance, this study investigates how the differ-ent forms of SC heterogeneity influence the customers’ intention to adopt a service innovation, considering the moderating effects of degree of service digitalization as well as buying center (BC) heterogeneity of expertise and values. Drawing on organizational buying behavior theory, we hypothesize a positive effect of SC heterogeneity of expertise on the intention to adopt, while SC heterogeneity of values is expected to weaken the intention to adopt. In addition, we propose varying moderating effects for the two different forms of BC heterogeneity as well as the degree of service digitalization. We will test the proposed hypotheses on the basis of a dyadic data collection. The expected findings will help sales managers to design their SCs in order to increase adoption rates of new services.

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