Document Type

Article

Publication Date

2025

DOI

10.1007/s11747-025-01096-3

Publication Title

Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science

Volume

Article in Press

Pages

28 pp.

Abstract

Adaptive selling represents a notable and influential concept in the marketing literature. Despite being discussed in scholarly research and managerial practice for over forty years and mixed findings about its impact, a comprehensive understanding of the construct of adaptive selling remains missing. To remedy this critical knowledge gap, we conduct a comprehensive review of 188 articles across twenty-seven journals. We combine three approaches in our survey of the literature, including a systematic review, a main path analysis, and a bibliographic analysis. Together, this three-prong review offers profound insights into the state of adaptive selling research by (1) mapping the key stages of evolution of research in this domain over the last four decades, (2) delineating various conceptualizations and operational measures of the construct of adaptive selling, and (3) advancing an integrated framework of the nomological network of adaptive selling. Based on these insights, we outline five major opportunities for future theoretical development and empirical research to move the domain forward.

Rights

© The Authors 2025

This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0), which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original authors and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder.

Data Availability

Article states: "Supporting data is available upon request."

ORCID

0000-0001-9453-1256 (Epler), 0000-0001-6205-5523 (O'Toole)

Original Publication Citation

Chaker, N. N., Epler, R. T., Moreno, G., Amiri, D., McDougal, E. G., & O'Toole, J. (2025). The past, present, and future of adaptive selling: Toward an integrative framework. Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11747-025-01096-3

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