A Practice-based view of Sales Culture

Previous research on salesforce culture has focused on the intra-organisational and management perspectives of salesforce culture, whereas the present study analyses salesforce culture as a practice-based phenomenon embedded in the cultural-historical context. The purpose of the present paper is to develop a holistic view of salesforce culture, where the actual practice of selling is related to organisational-level salesforce culture and the more aggregate cultural-historical context of selling. An empirical study using an ethnographic research approach among salespersons at a car-retailing company is presented. The study contributes to the salesforce-culture literature by i) providing a holistic, practice-based view of salesforce culture; ii) developing a conceptual framework for understanding salesforce culture, and iii) introducing practice theory into the field of sales research. Moreover, the study demonstrates that practice theory provides an appropriate perspective for the analysis of marketing phenomena.