The Impact of Learning Context on Intent to Use Marketing and Sales Technology: A Comparison of Scenario-Based and Task-Based Approaches

Abstract

With firms focused on increasing efficiency and effectiveness in today’s marketing and sales environment, it is crucial that salesforce training methods facilitate greater adoption of salesforce automation technology. Given the growth in sales education at colleges and universities, firms are looking to recruit their frontline marketing and sales personnel direct from college. Thus, there is an opportunity for marketing educators to influence these future marketing and sales professionals’ attitudes toward technology via course instruction. This study combines technology-mediated learning and technology acceptance theories in the marketing sales education domain to show how two different contextual learning modes affected marketing and sales students’ perceptions of technology. A total of 252 marketing/sales students from an Account and Territory Management class were taught to use a salesforce automation tool using two different contextual learning approaches. Findings showed that when students were taught using an approach involving a realistic sales scenario, their perceptions of technology usefulness were greater than if the course instruction was delivered using a systematic task-based learning approach. This supports the view that the learning context of technology training matters. For students of marketing and sales, the implication is the development of perceptions that make them more willing to use technology in the workplace.