Correspondence: Khurram Sharif, Management and Marketing Department College of Business and Economics P.O. Box 2713 Qatar University, Doha, Qatar. Tel: +974 4851830; Fax: +974 4852290; e-mail: ksharif@qu.edu.qa

¹is an assistant professor of Marketing and International Business in the Management and Marketing Department of Qatar University. He is also a marketing research consultant and has worked with numerous UK pharmaceutical companies on a variety of projects. His current research interests include marketing research design and methodologies, benchmarking salesforce performance, customer experience management and managing business relationships within the healthcare sector.

Received 20 May 2008; Revised 20 May 2008; Published online 4 July 2008.

Abstract

A modified Delone and McLean model was used as a research framework to analyse the linkage between utilisation of information and communication technologies (ICTs) by sales representatives and the impact of this on their customer-based (external) and organisational (internal) relationships. The outcome indicated that the thrust of ICTs implementation was largely data-centric instead of customer-centric. A majority of respondents felt that ICTs as a relationship building tool were applied passively within a sales-oriented, rather than customer-oriented, environment.