The Future of Research on International Selling and Sales Management

Abstract

As companies expand their international footprint, insight regarding how to effectively organize international selling and sales management (ISSM) efforts is becoming increasingly important. Unfortunately, most prior research on personal selling and sales management is grounded in a domestic market perspective, which limits the relevance of its findings to situations in which sales activities occur between stakeholders located in different national markets. This special issue responds to the need for dedicated research on ISSM through six articles that explore phenomena arising from the interaction between international salespeople and international customers and their domestic counterparts. Moreover, this editorial builds on these six articles to advance a research agenda rooted in an interaction-based conceptualization of the ISSM field that identifies areas of inquiry related to international salespeople, international customers, and international managers, and subsequently prioritizes these research opportunities using input provided by sales practitioners. This special issue and editorial thus identify critical, underexplored research topics in the ISSM domain that are accompanied by a series of illustrative examples of how best to contribute to this emerging but important literature stream.