Benefits, discounts, features, and value as communication foci in selling: Exploring concepts, drivers, and outcomes

Customers in business markets face difficult choice problems. Depending on the customer’s choice construal, in terms of the customer’s criteria and the tradeoffs the customer wants to make, different kinds of information are relevant and influential. We conceptualize four communication foci in B2B selling, which differ in terms of the kinds of information that is communicated during sales interactions with customers: value communication, benefit communication, feature communication, and discount communication. Drawing on survey data from a sample of 226 B2B salespeople, we empirically investigate these constructs and specifically test for their distinctiveness. Finally, in an exploratory analysis, we identify potential drivers, outcomes, and moderators (i.e., enablers) of these communication foci. The four communication foci are driven by substantially different sets of drivers, indicating that they are employed in different settings. We find no communication focus is clearly directly related to sales performance. Instead, the effectiveness of a communication focus is likely to depend on the situation.