ABSTRACT

There is recollection, social media can benefit sales management and personal selling, more in
B2B context. The research provides a psychological theory which proposes and tests the model
of use of social media in sales, scrutinize organizational, individual and customer related factors.
Social media use in sales can be determined by the key determinants which is organizational
competency level and commitment level in social media. Social media in sales can be predicted
by consumer engagement with social media by analyzing organizational and individual factors,
especially organizational commitment and competence. Finally, it was founded that there exist a
synergic effects between individual commitment and competence.
INTRODUCTION
Social media use is growing significanty now a days. Nielsen Company stated that time spent by
people on social media websites are more than on any other websites, if taken in average, time
spent by people on social media in 2012 was 121.18 min per day which showed an increase of
37% from the previous year. Due to this trend, researchers are motivated to understand the
influence of social media on customer preference and purchase decisions. More research is
needed on how to use social media in business marketing and mainly in selling. This research
determines the use of social media in sales by some meaningful determinants which are
consumer engagement with social media, competency and commitment level of organization and
also sales executives commitment and competency with social media.
REVIEW OF LITERETURE
There are many ways to define social media. Marketo defined it as a platform for consumption,
production and exchange of information through online interactions. From the context of selling
it helps in finding the customers and find out their needs. In real, social media has been defined
as a platform through which people interact and communicate with each other through various
available social networking sites, discussion forums, multimedia sites, and blogs. Some are the
popular one, they are Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Google +, Myspace and YouTube.
The importance of social media use in sales is increasing, which has encouraged lot of
researchers to study the width of tools of social media for sales, what benefits it provides to sales
and what are the challenges that can be faced, they also want to define the role of a salesperson
and how to deploy strategies which will increase the performance and help in building powerfull
customer relationship.
The way in which buyers and sellers interact with each other is transforming with the help of
social media. Through connectivity, salesperson are always available to their clients and
employers, it also builds a strong relationship among people who contact each other for business
purposes, with the help of selling tools available buyers are creating demands and also maintain
their relationships with their customers. Social media has a global reach, its helps the sellers to
find and contact their customer across the globe.

CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK
Here in this study of use of role of social media in sales author has defined use of social media
has become an intensity with which uses social media in organization where web based apps are
used as a tool for social interaction.
Theoretical Foundation for this research is taken from interactional psychology which asserts
that consumer behavior is developed with the help of regular and multidirectional interactions
between factors emerged from people and situations.
Here in this research, researcher has considered people as commitment of sales manager and
situation as organizational factors and customer related factors.
This proposed model used for Business to Business selling context where an attempt is made to
identify the nature of individuals consumers and organization which sways social media use in
Business to Business sales where sales man has to interact with the clients and attract them for a
longer time to do business with them.

HYPOTHESES
Following hypotheses were made by the researcher
H1
A) There is a positive relationship between social media uses in sales and individual
commitment in social media
B) There is a positive relationship between social media uses in sales and individual
competence in social media
C) There is a synergistic affect between individual commitment and individual competence,
in affecting social media in sales
H2
A) There is a positive relationship between social media uses in sales and organizational
commitment in social media
B) There is a positive relationship between social media uses in sales and organizational
competence in social media
C) There are synergistic affects between organizational commitment and organizational
competence, in affecting social media in sales
H3
There is a positive relationship between social media uses in sales and customer
engagement in social media
H4
A) Individual competence in social media mediates the relationship between social media
uses in sales and customer engagement in social media
 B) Individual competence in social media mediates the relationship between social media
uses in sales and customer engagement in social media
C) Organizational competence in social media mediates the relationship between social
media uses in sales and customer engagement in social media
D) Organizational commitment in social media mediates the relationship between social
media use in sales and customer engagement in social media

RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
This research is done sales executives in The United States of America, respondents were
contacted via Email to do an online survey. Sample size for this research were 220 sales
executives, out of which 18.2% were Senior sales leader, 30.9% were sales manager, 22.7
percent were support manager, 18.6% were sales person and 9.5% were operations manager.
They all represented different companies of different sizes and industries. They belonged to an
age group of 23 years to 63 years.
They were divided into two groups and T-test was used to compare them on the terms of
responses for different variables.
To test the Hypotheses researchers used OLS multiple regression analysis and for mediating
effects Sobel test was used.
RESULTS
While testing the hypothesis 1a, p-value was 0.594, which did not supported the hypotheses
which is why it was rejected. For Hypotheses 1b, p- value was 0.020 and it supported the
anticipation of the Hypotheses. Hypotheses 1c was also supported because while testing the
hypotheses p-value was 0.028.
For Hypotheses 2a, p-value was 0.000 which supported the anticipation of this hypotheses. P-
value of Hypotheses 2b was 0.045 and it supported what was anticipated by this hypotheses.
Hypotheses 2c was not supported because its p-value was 0.434.
Hypotheses 3 anticipated that there is a positive relation between social media usage in sales and
consumer engagement in social media, this hypotheses was supported by the p-value 0.000 and it
was accepted.
Mediating affect
Researcher found that the four factors used in the study are partially mediating in respect to
consumer engagement by other four predictors, but mediating affect is much more in the case of
organizational factor in comparison to individual factor and mediating affect is much lower in
the case of commitment level and competence among individuals.

DISCUSSION
This research was done to provide and test a model of uses of social media in sekking process of
the organization considering three factors which are consumer, oragniazational and individual
related.
The most relevant variable in respect to uses of social media in sales in organizational
competence followed by organizational competence and individual competence.
Managerial Implications
Studys findings showed several managerial implications like in supplier thinks that they can be
benefited by use of social media in sales then companies need to develop organizational
commitment and competence.
Secondly research conveys that companies should consider the candidate who are actively taking
part in social media interactions and at the same time companies should take an initiative of
promoting the usage of interaction with social media.

LIMITATIONS
There were several limitations for this research
1) Researcher considered only two factors which are competence and commitment with
respect to interactional theory.
2) Even though researcher has taken utmost steps to avoid biasness but still future research
can use other ways to measure the use of social media in sales.

CONSLUSION
Social media benefits for managing sales and personal selling is extensive, it will stay in the
market for a long term. This research helps in understanding some of the precursor of use of
social media by sales organizations. To make more effective and efficient use of the tools for
sales, deep research is required in this area. Social media platforms are not going to be the same,
new innovation and platforms will be brought into the market which will also bring new
challenges for the practitioners.

RESEARCH GAP
In Comparision to Social media: Influencing customer satisfaction in B2B sales
Authors: - Raj Agnihotri, Rebecca Dingus,Michael Y. Hu, Michael T. Krush

Here in this study research has been done on how social media acts as as ibfluencing factor fir
consumer satisfaction in sales of business to business model.
Other gap in relation to this article is here researcher has used only consumer and organizational
perception where as in above article comittment and complaince was given more importance.
Another gap was here in this research likert scale is used not as the other research where
regression and scalp was used.

IN Comparision to The Impact of Media Advertising on Proton Sales

Authors: - Kiandokht Hadadi, Mahmoud Khalid Almsafir

In this article the research gap which we found was that the whole article is focused on how
advertising helps in portion sales where as in reviewed article the main focus was on usage if
social media in sales.
Tool used for analysis is corelation where as reviewed article is regression.
Here in article the variable used for study is online advertising, television advertising and news
paper advertising whereas in reviewed article the organizational consumer and individual factors
were considered.

This research was done on the automobile industry where respondents were the people who
owned photon cars.

In Comparision to The use of social media among business-to-business sales

professionals in China.
Authors: - Keith E. Niedermeier and Emily Wang, Xiaohan Zhang
Here the first research gap is that the study is done in china
Other research gap is this study has considered the respondents from pharmasutical industry and
media technilogy firm.
For analysis three indepth interviews were conducted however in reviewed article online survey
method was used in order to collect data from respondents.
Here in this article, research was done to explore how sales person of china use social media for
marketing whereas in reviewed article research was done to see relationship between individual
and organizational competency and commitment level.
This research is again based n the concept of guanxi which means trust in business connections.

In Comparision to SOCIAL MEDIA IN LARGE SALES FORCES: AN EMPIRICAL STUDY

OF THE IMPACT OF SALES PROCESS CAPABILITY AND RELATIONSHIP
PERFORMANCE
Authors: -Michael Rodriguez, Haya Ajjan, and Robert M. Peterson
Here the first research gap would be the difference of type of study, as this research is an
emperical study where as the reviewed article was an quantative paper.
To analyse the data one factor analysis was done in this research whereas in reviewed article T-
test was used to check the medeating factor for organizational and individual commitment.

In Comparision to Social media usage: an investigation of B2B salespeople

Authors: -Roberta J. Schultz, Charles H. Schwepker, Jr and David J. Good

Here the first research gap would be the type of study done in both of these papers where in this
research investagative study was done on the other hand in reviewed article quantative stusy was
done.
Another reserach gap would be the tool used in this article is structural equating model and in the
rewiewed article tool for analysis is t test and regression.

Here in this study there was an negative relationship between social media usage and sale of the
organisation.
Here the research was done to check the strategic usage of social media whereas in reviewed
article the research was done to check the meadearing factors of organizational and individual
commitment and competence towards the usage of social media in sales.