The Impact of Personality Variables, Prior Experience, and Training on Sales Agents’ Internet Utilization and Performance

Emerging literature on the impact of the Internet on business-to-business (B2B) marketing has primarily focused on examining this issue from the perspective of manufacturers and buyers. This study focuses on the sales agent, a third prominent actor in B2B markets, and tests a conceptual model that relates a sales agent’s personality, demographic, and user-situational constructs to that sales agent’s Internet utilization for selling activities. Further, the model tested in this study relates a sales agent’s Internet utilization to perceived sales performance. Findings in this study indicate that internal locus of control, learning orientation, and sales related Internet training relate positively to a sales agent’s Internet utilization, and that a sales agent’s age relates negatively to Internet utilization. Further, the results support a positive relationship between a sales agent’s Internet utilization and sales performance. This study emphasizes that the Internet can be a productive tool for sales agents. Rajesh Gulati is Assistant Professor of Marketing, G. R. Herberger College of Business, St. Cloud State University, St. Cloud, MN 56301 (E-mail: rgulati@stcloudstate. edu). Dennis N. Bristow is Associate Professor of Marketing, G. R. Herberger College of Business, St. Cloud State University, St. Cloud, MN 56301. Wenyu Dou is Assistant Professor of Marketing, G. R. Herberger College of Business, St. Cloud State University, St. Cloud, MN 56301. Journal of Business-to-Business Marketing, Vol. 11(1/2) 2004 http://www.haworthpress.com/web/JBBM  2004 by The Haworth Press, Inc. All rights reserved. Digital Object Identifier: 10.1300/J033v11n01_09 153 The implications of the results of this study for sales agents with respect to training and recruitment are discussed and avenues for future research are suggested. [Article copies available for a fee from The Haworth Document Delivery Service: 1-800-HAWORTH. E-mail address: Website: © 2004 by The Haworth Press, Inc. All rights reserved.]