90 CONTRIBUTION OF SOCIAL MEDIA AND CULTURAL INTELLIGENCE ON INDIAN-THAI B2B Arti Pandey *1 and Aksarapak Lucktong 2 ABSTRACT: Business to Business or B2B relationships lead to a large volume of long-term business, in particular international trade. Effective salespersons who are able to deal with foreign clients are essential in this globally digital world. Social media has been used as a communication tool for cross-cultural selling; however, personal selling attributes of salespeople should be considered as well. Therefore, our study aims to examine the benefit of social media in facilitating cross-cultural sales performance and to investigate the mediating effect of cultural intelligence (CQ) and two selling behaviors on increasing sales success. The survey study collected data from a total of 234 Thai salespersons dealing with Indian businessmen. Findings show that Thai salespeople using social media intensively in their B2B tasks tend to present higher levels of cross-cultural sales performance. The mediating effects analysis shows that CQ, adaptive selling behavior and customer-oriented selling behavior fully mediated the positive relationship between social media use for Indian-Thai B2B selling and cross-cultural sales performance. It is recommended herein that, apart from social media usage training programs, international businesses should organize CQ, adaptive selling technique and customer-oriented selling technique programs for their salespeople in order to increase the chance of their success in cross-cultural selling tasks. Keywords: Social media, Cultural intelligence, Cross-cultural selling, Business to business Introduction Nowadays, many international business organizations increase the number 1 International College of National Institute of Development Administration (ICO NIDA). 19 th Floor, Navamindradhiraj Building 118 Moo 3, Serithai Road Klong- Chan, Bangkapi, Bangkok Thailand – 10240. Tel: +66 2727 3526, E-mail: artioctober@gmail.com 2 School of Liberal Arts, King Mongkut ’s University of Technology Thonburi (KMUTT). 126 Pracha Uthit Road, Bang Mod, Thung Khru, Bangkok, Thailand 10140. Tel. +66 2470 8724, E-mail: aksarapak.luck@mail.kmutt.ac.th of their foreign clients by attending international trade shows, because these shows help them to create their brand awareness to prospective foreign buyers and expand their international marketing position (Pandey & Charoensukmongkol, 2019). In addition to these benefits to the firms, their salespeople can also have the opportunities to present information regarding the benefits of the product directly to prospective foreign customers (Jha et al., 2019). If, after the sales presentation, clients are interested in the organization’s products, it will lead to larger sales volumes and long-term Business to Business (or B2B) relationships. Unarguably, it is quite challenging for the salespeople to continue the B2B relationships with those cross- cultural clients after attending the