Corporate entrepreneurship, customer-oriented selling, absorptive capacity, and international sales performance in the international B2B setting: Conceptual framework and research propositions

Rajshekhar G. Javalgi, Kenneth D. Hall and S. Tamer Cavusgil

International Business Review, 2014, vol. 23, issue 6, 1193-1202

Abstract: In the international business-to-business (B2B) setting, a firm's salespeople often have more direct, prolonged, and intimate contact with the customer and market environments than any other employees of the firm. In fact, for customers in many B2B markets, the salesperson is the face of the firm. The sales function can be characterized as an inherently entrepreneurial activity. Entrepreneurship is founded on knowing or seeing something others do not see, and the sales force has long been recognized as an important source of knowledge about a firm's customers and environment. However, there has been relatively little work linking entrepreneurship to international sales performance, especially in the B2B context.

Keywords: Absorptive capacity; B2B marketing; Corporate entrepreneurship; Customer-oriented selling; Cultural distance; International B2B sales; Knowledge-based view (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2014
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (12)

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DOI: 10.1016/j.ibusrev.2014.04.003

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