Digital Transformation in Sales: Managerial Cognition, Technology Adoption, and the Strategic Role of Innovativeness

This dissertation examines the digitalisation and digital transformation of personal selling and sales management from a multi-level strategic perspective. It conceptualises digitalisation and digital transformation as related but distinct forms of strategic change and investigates their links to managerial cognition, organisational and individual innovativeness, and customer relationship performance. The dissertation develops an integrative framework in which environmental pressures, organisational conditions, managerial interpretations, and salesperson adaptation jointly shape transformation outcomes. The dissertation consists of three interconnected articles. The first is a qualitative study based on interviews with Hungarian salespeople (n=122) and explores early-stage sales digitalisation and technology acceptance from a frontline perspective. The second is a quantitative study based on survey data from Hungarian sales professionals (n=233) and examines the relationships among organisational and salesperson innovativeness, digitalisation, and customer relationship performance. The third is a systematic literature review of recent research on managerial cognition and strategic change (n=85), providing the broader interpretive and strategic context for the empirical studies. Taken together, the findings show that digital transformation in sales is best understood as a connected process of interpretation, mobilisation, enactment, and translation. Managerial cognition frames and directs transformation, innovativeness functions as a key linking mechanism, and customer relationship performance improves not through digitalisation alone, but through the innovative and relational behaviours through which digital and organisational resources are converted into value.

Name dc:type.qualificationname

phd

Level dc:type.qualificationlevel

doctoral

Grantor dc:publisher.institution

Budapesti Corvinus Egyetem

Year dc:date.issued

2026

Author dc:creator

• Pelsőci, Balázs Lajos

• Innováció, tudásgazdaság
• Marketing

Language dc:language

en