How is marketers' credibility construed within the sales-marketing interface?

Abstract

Extant sales-marketing interface research has ignored how salespeople interpret marketers' credibility. This paper integrates interdisciplinary research on credibility and the sales-marketing interface with interview data from 33 informants to expound three components of this phenomenon; expertise, trust, and interpersonal proximity. Explication of this construct's nuances thus helps to better understand at a micro-level, the potential but sometimes non-apparent cause of some of the problems within sales-marketing interface, and also highlights many avenues to optimize this interface based on the understanding of its inner workings. The findings also expand the repertoire of tools managers may use to harmonize this interface.