Salesperson ambidexterity, firm capabilities, and value co-creation: Key factors in salespeople’s innovative service behavior?

[EN] This study examines how a firm’s innovation capability and marketing capability, as well as salespeople’s ambidexterity in sales and service, influence value co-creation with customers and how this co-creation and ambidexterity directly impact innovative service behavior in salespeople. The paper contributes to the literature by addressing certain aspects that have been relatively unexplored to date. A quantitative study is carried out using a sample consists of 91 sales professionals from the United Kingdom and the United States of America, spanning both consumer (B2C) and industrial market (B2B) salespeople, providing a diverse perspective. Using partial least squares (PLS-SEM) methodology, the findings reveal that (a) value co-creation, driven by the firm’s innovation capability and marketing capability, positively affects salespeople’s innovative service behavior, and (b) the development of ambidextrous sales and service skills among frontline employees also fosters innovative behaviors in service in the sales team. Based on service-dominant logic, this research provides novel insights into how value co-creation serves as a driver of innovative service behavior in salespeople. It further extends previous research by considering sales and service ambidexterity as a key factor in driving this innovative behavior. These findings highlight the need to co-create value with customers and enhance salespeople’s individual competencies to drive their innovative behavior in service within the current competitive and evolving market context.