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Abstract
The rise of online competitors and increasingly well-informed customers have spurred stationary retailers to take measures to increase the quality of face-to-face selling as a key differentiator. Mobile sales assistants (MSAs) represent an intensively discussed technological approach to address these challenges in the salesperson–customer dyad. However, in many cases, salespeople do not or only sporadically use MSAs. Prior research provides inadequate answers as to why this is the case, as extant technology acceptance and resistance theories have limited applicability to MSAs. To address these research gaps, the authors conduct a qualitative, theory-building approach and identify 21 factors associated with resistance. In a subsequent quantitative survey study, they validate these factors and refine their conceptual structure. The results show that several largely unknown factors are associated with salespeople’s resistance to MSA use: The three higher-order constructs, ‘incongruence’, ‘relationship deterioration’, and ‘operational imperfection’, are newly introduced to the literature on technology resistance. The findings extend prior technology acceptance and resistance theories and provide comprehensive insights for retail managers.
Acknowledgements
A big word of thanks goes to Klaus Gutknecht for providing the organizational framework for the data collection. Further warm thanks should be given to Waldemar Toporowski, Maik Hammerschmidt, Reto Felix, and Jun He for their conceptual input.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
ORCiD
Philipp Spreer http://orcid.org/0000-0003-4856-6567
Notes
1 We thank a reviewer for this suggestion.