The effects of digital proliferation and the social comparisons it drives are prevalent in consumer settings. However, similar topics have not been studied in sales settings where 'social sales management' practices that employ digital media (e.g., Salesforce’s Chatter, Slack, or GroupMe) to drive competitive comparisons are becoming increasingly common. A recognized outcome of social comparison, envy, has been the subject of growing interest in management and psychology, yet has received scant attention in marketing. Our research addresses this gap by conducting a qualitative study (Study 1) with sales professionals and a field study of telecommunications salespeople that combines surveys and objective performance metrics (Study 2). Findings reveal that both benign and malicious envy exist in sales and develop based on the internal or external competitive drivers, respectively. Further, these two envy dimensions have differing effects on sales outcomes, with benign increasing and malicious decreasing performance. Counterintuitively, as competition increases, manager support drives both forms of envy thereby producing countervailing downstream effects on performance. Our mixed-methods approach allows for profound implications for both scholars and managers.
Biography:
Dr Nawar Chaker, Assistant Professor of Marketing at Elon University, completed his PhD in Business Administration focused on Marketing from the University of Tennessee. Prior to joining academia, he worked in industry where he worked in marketing, sales, distribution, and engineering. He spent about three years at Johnson Controls and another four years at Arrow Electronics, primarily in selling roles. His main research interests revolve around understanding drivers of salesperson performance, emotions in sales, the salesperson-sales manager interface, cross-functional sales relationships, and front-line employee management. In addition to national and international conferences, his research has appeared in the Journal of Business Research, Industrial Marketing Management, Journal of Personal Selling and Sales Management, and Journal of Marketing Theory and Practice.
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