Impact of the Digitized Sales Work Environment on Customer Orientation

Informed by appraisal theory, which highlights personal characteristics and resources as critical to the emergence of stress appraisal and adaptation (Lazarus & Folkman, 1984), our study poses the following questions: What characterizes the DSWE? What is the role of the DSWE in creating salesperson distress and eustress? How is a salesperson’s customer orientation/ value-based selling affected by the DSWE? In our attempt to explore the potential up- and downsides of work environment digitalization and the appraisal of the pervasive use of Information Technology in everyday work, we adopted a qualitative approach. We combined information from qualitative interviews with B2B customer contact employees, namely sales professionals, sales managers, consultants, and project managers from four different corporations in Germany, with discussions from four online sales communities that built the basis for our qualitative content analysis approach.