Social media experience: A Uses and Gratifications theory based view in B2B selling teams

Abstract

Social media’s emergence as a powerful tool in driving business outcomes is proven. Social media’s penetration among Business-to-business (B2B) employees has improved vastly over the years, but the understanding is far from complete. This study aims to determine how social media usage for work purposes by employees, specifically B2B selling teams, influences their experience from the lens of the Uses and Gratification theory (UGT). The study used a sample of 245 selling team practitioners to test the proposed model using the UGT lens. The results confirm that social media usage at work by the selling team employees positively influences their various dimensions of experience at cognitive (CX), affective (AX), and social (SX) levels. Further, the SU, CX, and SX did not differ significantly between sales employees and other selling team members even though AX differed. The findings reveal that selling team employees' experience is influenced by social media usage at work and hence selling organizations need to carve their social media strategy around these dimensions of selling team employee experience.