Managing salespeople strategically when promoting new products¬タヤIncorporating market orientation into a sales management control framework

a r t i c l e i n f o Salespeople play a pivotal role in promoting new products. Therefore, managers need to know what control mechanism (i.e., output-based control, behavior-based control, or knowledge-based control) can improve their salespeople's new product sales performance. Furthermore, managers may be able to assist salespeople in performing better by having a strong market orientation. The literature has been inconsistent regarding the effects of sales management control mechanisms and has not yet incorporated market orientation into a sales management control framework. The current study surveyed 315 Taiwanese salespeople from publicly traded electronics companies with the aim of contributing to the sales management literature. The results show that sales management controls can directly affect salespeople's innovativeness, which, in turn, affects new product sales performance. However, sales management controls cannot affect performance directly. Furthermore, market orientation can positively moderate the relationship between salespeople's innovativeness and new product sales performance. The purpose of this paper is to examine the influence of perceived sales management controls on salespeople's new products sales performance (i.e., electronic goods) in a business-to-business (B2B) context. The moderating influences of market orientation on the relationship between salespeople's innovativeness and new product sales performance will also be investigated. New product development and promotion is an expensive and time-consuming process that suffers from a high failure rate (Jonash & Sommerlatte, 1999; Krishnan & Zhu, 2006). Although there are additional risks associated with new product promotion (e.g., financial and brand image), the introduction of innovative new products is a critical success factor (e.g., the ability to generate sales and gain market share) for many corporations (Jonash & Sommerlatte, 1999; Krishnan & Zhu, 2006). According to Kim and Atuahene-Gima (2010), successful new products can improve corporate image, attract new customers while retaining existing clients, recruit new talent, and generate significant revenues and profits. Given the importance of new products for firm performance and given that only a small percentage of new product initiatives survive in the marketplace, additional research is needed on the factors that lead to the successful commercialization of new products (Fu, Richards, Hughes, & Jones, 2010). Salespeople play an important role in selling new products. First, as Fu et al. (2010) and O'Hara (1993) noted, sales representatives are crucial for selling new products that were previously unfamiliar to consumers because these individuals interact with potential customers, identify their needs, determine how their needs can be …