Social media: Influencing customer satisfaction in B2B sales

• This article considers the practical role of salesperson social media use as a positive influencer in a B2B sales context.
• Salespeople's use of social media positively impacts information communication, which encourages their responsiveness.
• This social media use affects customer satisfaction, to the extent that the information relayed is important to customers.
• Firms should evaluate if or how they want to expend resources committing their salespeople's time and effort to social media.

Social media have changed how buyers and sellers interact, and increased involvement through social media may yield positive results for sales organizations if salespeople utilize it in facilitating their behaviors. Through the perspective of value creation, we test the mediating effects of salesperson information communication behaviors between social media use and customer satisfaction. Using salesperson-reported data, within a B2B context, we empirically test a model using structural equation modeling. Salesperson's use of social media is found to impact information communication behaviors, which enhance salesperson responsiveness and customer satisfaction. Also, salesperson responsiveness is found to have a positive relationship with customer satisfaction. Findings suggest that social media plays an important role in communicating information to customers, but as an antecedent enhancing salesperson behaviors to increase customer satisfaction rather than a direct factor. This encourages managers to carefully assess goals related to social media use of their sales force.