Past research on Competitive Intelligence (CI) has been centered at the organization level, and thus provides little foundation for investigations aimed at the salesperson level. To fill this gap, the current study examines the influence of salesperson’s CI use on performance. Social identity theory is employed as a mechanism to better understand how salespeople socially construct the meaning of CI. The proposed model incorporates role perceptions as antecedents to CI use and behavioral as well as performance outcomes of it. Manager level constructs such as recognition and coaching are included as moderators.
To test the model empirically, 513 salespeople from a US-based Fortune-500 company were surveyed. Objective performance data were collected from the company’s archival database. Structural equation modeling was used to analyze the hypothesized model.
Results of the study indicate that salespeople’s role stress hinder their motivation toward role behaviors, namely CI collection and CI use. On the other hand, positive role perceptions act as drivers that foster salespeople’s effort toward collecting CI and using it. Recognition from managers enhances the relationship between a salesperson’s role identity salience and CI collection underlining the manager’s role in this process. The CI use links positively to adaptive selling behaviors emphasizing the importance of competitor knowledge apart from customer and product knowledge. Additionally, post-hoc analysis suggests that salespeople enhance their performance by using CI only if it is coupled with coaching from managers. Therefore, in order to create a CI-conducive environment, managers have to provide coaching accordingly.