Does salesperson's customer orientation create value in B2B relationships? Empirical evidence from India Ramendra Singh a, ⁎, Abraham Koshy b,1 a W-404 New Teaching Block, Indian Institute of Management Calcutta, D.H.Road, Joka, Kolkata 700104, India b Wing 10, Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad, Vastrapur, Ahmedabad 380015, India abstract article info Article history: Received 23 February 2009 Received in revised form 10 February 2010 Accepted 15 April 2010 Available online 8 October 2010 Keywords: Salesperson Customer orientation Value creation b2b relationships SOCO Although value creation in business relationships has taken an important position in the literature, yet scant attention has been paid to the precise nature of creation or destruction of value in b2b customer-oriented selling. Moreover, very few empirical studies in the b2b customer value research have focused on emerging markets, especially the BRIC countries. This study carried out in the context of small and medium sized firms in India, empirically examines from the SOCO perspective (Saxe and Weitz, 1982), value creation in customer- oriented selling, and value destruction in sales-oriented strategies. We model value creation, relationship development, and customer satisfaction as direct and indirect consequences of salesperson's customer orientation. Based on a sample of 249 small and medium sized Indian firms, we show that salesperson's customer orientation directly leads to value creation and relationship development with customers. On the other hand, a sales orientation destroys value, although it may lead to relationship development in the short- term. We also found that customer satisfaction was unrelated to both types of salesperson's orientations. Our study has considerable impact for small and medium sized businesses in emerging BRIC markets such as India, as it throws light on how supplier firms can leverage their salesforce to create value creation with their customers. © 2010 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. The 2003 Goldman Sachs global economics paper, “Dreaming with BRICs: Path to 2050,” suggests that BRIC countries currently contribute 13% of global economic output, and are expected to grow at 8% per annum for the next few years. The report also predicts that India, being an important BRIC member, could witness its economy become larger than Japan's by 2032, and become the third largest economy in the world in next 30 years. Much of the expected economic growth is likely to be driven by the small and medium enterprises after the Indian economy is further liberalized. However, India also presents a cultural milieu that is in contrast to most developed western societies. Cultural values are also known to affect the interests, priorities, and strategies used in business negotiations (Brett, 2000), that eventually impacts an individual's approach towards exchange relationships (Shi, 2001). India is known to be a society characterised by a collectivist, high-context, strong uncertainty-avoidance, and large power-distance culture (Hall, 1976; Hofstede, 1981). In high context societies, communication between individuals is characterized by focus on non-verbal cues, more implicit than explicit (Cohen, 1991), and displaying trust toward people in ways different from those in low-context cultures (Hsu, 1983). Such individuals are also more risk averse (Lewicki & Bunker, 1996), which in turn impacts their economic rationality (Bazerman, 1994), towards assessing costs and rewards associated with their behaviors (Doney, Cannon, & Mullen, 1998). In this socio-cultural milieu, exploring the role of value creation in business relationships becomes important, since value is considered to be the raison d'etre of collaborative customer–supplier relationships (Anderson, 1995). Value creation has been examined at the firm level in the b2b context in several studies (e.g., Beverland, Farrelly, & Woodhatch, 2004; Eggert, Ulaga, & Schultz, 2006; Flint, Woodruff, & Gardial, 2002; Lapierre, 2000; Ulaga & Eggert, 2005). However, research on customer value in business markets is still in an early stage (Flint et al., 2002), focusing predominantly on the value of the physical product, neglecting relational dimensions of customer-perceived value (Dwyer & Tanner, 1999). The popular concept of relationship value (Payne and Holt, 1999) too focuses on products, delivery, service, and interactions, as key dimensions (Dorsch, Swanson, & Kelley, 1998; Eggert & Ulaga, 2002; Gassenheimer, Houston, & Davis, 1998; Möller & Törrönen, 2003; Ulaga, 2003; Walter, Ritter, & Gemünden, 2001), ignoring the salesperson's customer-oriented behaviors that may impact on the value creation. Although a firm's market orientation consists of market sensing, dissemination, and response, market sensing as an aspect becomes more important in which salespersons play a vital role. This study too only includes those aspects of salesperson's customer orientation (focussed more on market Industrial Marketing Management 40 (2011) 78–85 ⁎ Corresponding author. Tel.: +91 33 24678000x552, +91 9998493034. E-mail addresses: ramendra@iimcal.ac.in, s_ramendra@yahoo.co.in (R. Singh), akoshy@iimahd.ernet.in (A. Koshy). 1 Tel.: +91 79 66324895; fax: +91 79 66306896. 0019-8501/$ – see front matter © 2010 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.indmarman.2010.09.012 Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Industrial Marketing Management