Jarkko Niemi is an Assistant Professor (tenure track) at LUT Business School, LUT University (Finland). His research focuses on B2B marketing and sales, with a particular emphasis on trust and salesperson–customer interaction in business markets.
His work examines how interactional dynamics in sales, such as communication strategies and relational signals, shape trust formation, relationship development, and decision-making. He is interested in how salespeople use adaptive interpersonal behaviors, including ingratiation and related influence strategies, in customer interactions.
In recent research, he explores how digitalization and artificial intelligence reshape salesperson–customer interactions in increasingly mediated environments. He currently serves as Principal Investigator in a research project on AI-assisted sales (“Putting AI Agents to Work in Sales”, PAWS), which examines how firms can combine human and artificial agency to improve sales productivity and customer relationships.
Jarkko’s research has been published in international journals (e.g., Industrial Marketing Management, Journal of Personal Selling & Sales Management), and he is actively involved in externally funded research projects in collaboration with industry partners. In addition to research, he teaches and supervises master’s and doctoral students in marketing and sales. In 2025, he received the LUT Teaching Excellence Award based on student feedback for his master’s level course “Sales Technology.”
