B2B sales: Is there a dark side to value creation?

A general belief among practitioners and scholars is that value creation is the key to successful relationships and superior individual and organizational performance. There are different ways through which value is created for customers. While no one can deny the importance of value creation, treating it as the “holy grail” seems shortsighted. The purpose of this research is to explore some potential downsides of value creation both at the selling organization level and salesperson level. Building on different quantitative methods and a qualitative exploration, this study (1) confirms that the unintended consequences of value-creating activities could be harmful to the customer and selling organization and (2) offers potential solutions for this problem at different levels. The first research utilizes CRM data from a U.S.-based consulting firm and knowledge creation theory to explore (for the first time in the literature) the effects of a customized customer solution on buying organization outcomes. The results suggest that customized customer solutions could impact different customer outcomes positively or negatively, and the speed of implementation and the perceived potential value could impact this relationship. The second research, building on experimental designs and conviction narrative theory, investigates the impact of organizational strategic emphasis on salespeople’s escalation of commitment behavior. The results show that when the organization's focus is on value creation (vs. value appropriation), salespeople are more likely to escalate their commitment to a customer account. Our findings indicate that using artificial intelligence for selling tasks such as lead generation and qualification can mitigate this problem. Moreover, we find that a salesperson’s hunting orientation could play a role in reducing the escalation of commitment in cases where value creation is the organizational emphasis