Abstract

Spurred by the overwhelming success of mobile “app stores”, enterprise software vendors are increasingly embracing the use of online sales channels. Whereas organizational buying behavior has already been investigated with regard to the acquisition of enterprise software via traditional offline channels, researchers have not yet focused on its provision using an electronic sales channel. In this explorative study, we laid the first bricks to fill this research gap and provided valuable insight to practitioners confronting this marketing innovation. Relying on a qualitative research strategy, we assessed the extent to which an electronic sales channel may support the different phases of a generic software buying process, and the impact of product characteristics on enterprise customers’ channel adoption. We identified a set of adoption drivers and barriers which ought to be taken into account by channel providers, and elicited technological and organizational solutions from the interviews.

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