Digitalization of Sales: A Case Study of the Effects on Sales Interaction

During the last two decades, digitalization of communication has affected the ways businesses and customers interact. Also, digitalization has had effects on consumer behavior. This phenomenon has enabled parts of customer interaction, such as synchronous face-to-face interaction, to take increasingly place in digital channels. Furthermore, it has enhanced flexibility and efficiency of communication and enabled firms to serve a greater number of customers with fewer resources. The nature and importance of inter-personal communication varies across contexts. That is, the digitalization of certain customer interactions require more effort and precision, while others are performed more effortlessly. In the business-to-business sales activity, creating and maintaining longterm dyadic relationships between the sellers and the buyers is an approach for companies to achieve sustained business performance. The aim to build long-term business relationships has led to a great deal of sales activity to take place in face-to-face interaction. However, digitalization of communication is rapidly changing this pattern. Therefore, the digitalization of sales interaction is a fertile ground for study. This thesis studies the effects of digitalization on sales interactions. Moreover, it investigates the customer experience during digital sales interaction. The study is conducted as a qualitative case study, with the case company operating in the IT-industry. The research question which guides the thesis is: What factors drive the digitalization of sales interaction? The research question is further separated into two sub-questions: 1) How does the digitalization of sales interaction affect customer experience? And 2) How should the communication process be set up to support the digitalization of sales interaction? The customers of the case company are interviewed as the primary source of data. Video-recordings of sales meetings are used as secondary data. The first main contribution of the thesis is the identification of the factors that drive the digitalization of sales. A conceptual model based on literature is combined with empirical findings to form a comprehensive picture of all the factors that enable the digitalization of sales and selling interaction. The second main contribution of the thesis is the conceptualization of how the medium of the selling interaction affects customer experience. By mapping the co-created value of the seller and buyer during the selling phase, it is presented how a sales interaction that involves communication only in the digital channel generates transactional value. In comparison, by meeting face-to-face, both transactional and relationship value is generated. In other words, face-to-face interaction during the sales process enables value embedded in the buyer-seller relationship such as co-creation of the service, which does not happen on the transactional basis, where the offering and its functionalities are the primary source of value. Furthermore, based on these factors, it is deducted that the digitalization of sales interaction drives selling towards a transactional type, with the role of the seller becoming more of a customer servant.