Salespeople knowledge search behavior and sales performance: An investigation of printing equipment industry

- This paper examines salespeople's online product knowledge search behavior.
- Deep and surface learning and vertical and horizontal knowledge are investigated.
- Deep knowledge searches outperform surface knowledge searches.
- Vertical knowledge of proximate competitors' products fosters sales.
- Horizontal knowledge of various competitors' products does not foster sales.

Despite a general consensus that salespeople's knowledge is an important determinant of sales performance, the extant literature provides only a limited explanation as to whether and how salespeople's learning styles and knowledge structures affect performance. This study investigates whether and how two learning styles - deep and surface - and two knowledge structures - vertical and horizontal - in respect of salespeople searching behavior in an inter-organizational information system lead to higher performance outcomes in printing equipment industry. We use a unique longitudinal dataset composed of 21,256 online search logs created by 408 salespeople and quarterly sales performance across 21 European countries from 2009 to 2013. The results show that salespeople must conduct a deep search to build rich product knowledge rather than surface search. Furthermore, instead of conducting a horizontal search across competing brands broadly, salespeople must focus on a vertical knowledge search for proximate competitors' products in addition to their own products. Finally, this study presents that the inter-organizational information system as a sales force control system can facilitate the identification and acquisition of external product knowledge and enable a firm to achieve superior performance.