Market niches as dynamic,co-created resource domains

Competing in niches is a fundamental marketing strategy for SMEs in business-to-business markets yet how internationalizing SMEs come to compete in the niches they do is unclear. Using multiple case studies of competing firms in a single B2B industry sector, this research found that niches evolved in response to resources supplied or withdrawn by early customers, sales channels, shareholders and competitors. We show that market niches are dynamic resource domains where market actors co-create new, specialized value. SMEs may target new niches when they internationalize because they cannot access the resources needed to co-create their domestic niche or because resources are valued differently.     

Managing channels of distribution in the age of electronic commerce

The emergence of electronic commerce (e-commerce) has created a new business paradigm, one that presents marketers with noteworthy opportunities and challenges. Perhaps the greatest impact is in the area of channel management. The top issue for many business-to-business (B2B) firms today is channel conflict. In this paper, we investigate the effect of introducing the Internet channel into an already complex, multichannel distribution system from the perspective of the supplier firm. We describe strategies for proactively managing conflict, both externally with channel partners and internally among the subunits responsible for managing the channels. Twelve propositions for research are developed; eight relate directly to the marketing mix and four focus on channel communication and coordination. All of the research propositions offered are mechanisms by which suppliers can influence the level of channel conflict they experience. Dedicated channel management groups, documentation of channel strategies, and superordinate goals are identified as strategies for minimizing unwanted conflict.     

Artificial intelligence as an enabler of B2B marketing: A dynamic capabilities micro-foundations approach

Over the past few decades research has predominantly focused on the technical aspects and theoretical challenges of Artificial Intelligence (AI). With the deluge of data and the increase in processing power, businesses are now facing the challenge of how to deploy AI that generates business value. In this direction, there is still nascent research on how AI can be leveraged in for B2B operations, and particularly marketing. To address this gap, this study draws on the dynamic capabilities view of the firm and specifically on the micro-foundations approach and builds on three selected case studies of large organizations in Norway that use AI for B2B marketing purposes. The study identifies a number of AI-specific micro-foundations of dynamic capabilities, essentially highlighting how organizations can use AI to manage B2B marketing operations in dynamic and uncertain environments. This study also identified several key cross-cutting elements emerging from the data, demonstrating how some key concepts are inter-related and how they affect overall business value.     

Integration,knowledge creation and B2B governance: The role of resource hierarchies in financial performance

Knowledge is a critical competitive resource for firms that increasingly exploit resources and capabilities combined with those of channel partners to create new knowledge. However, the opportunism risks inherent in any B2B relationship require firms to employ governance mechanisms to protect their interests. These tensions call for further study of how B2B partners exploit combined resources to produce new knowledge. This research employs a Resource Hierarchy View of resource bundling to describe the ways that firms integrate internal and external processes to achieve financial performance through knowledge creation, and the role that relational governance approaches play in enabling those resource combinations. The study finds that normative and formalized governance forms both enable complex combinations of knowledge creation and integration resources in a way that affects financial performance more than either resource could in simpler combination. However, there are differences in how knowledge is created through internal and external process integration.     

Channel members' relationships with the brands they sell and the organizations that own them

Relations between channel member organizations are not the only relationships of importance in channels research. Significant relationships also exist between channel members and the brands that they represent and sell. Just as in consumer brand relationships, we find that downstream agents co-create the meaning of the brand with which they form relationships. However, unlike consumer brand relationship models that often conflate brand and company, treating them as one; we find that brand relationships in a B2B setting are independent and distinct from the relationships formed between downstream agents and the owners and/or managers of the brand. These particular brand relationships are complicated by the high switching costs associated with long term investments. The findings from a four-year multi-method research project, including ethnographic and survey data, point to the salience of these brand relationships and their importance to channel management. We find that perceived stability of the corporate channel partner, as well as perceptions of overlap between the corporate identity and that of the brand, are key antecedents of the downstream channel members' relationship with the corporation.     

Successful service retail channel expansions: The roles of technical and brand integration

Service retail channel (SRC) expansion is common in B2B markets, but expansions into high-tech channels involve substantial market failure risks. Successful expansions create questions about the best way to integrate new and existing channels. Should the firm use its existing brand to market the new channel, or should it develop a new brand? Should the technology for the new channel be developed in-house or outsourced? The level of integration of both marketing and technical assets determines the perceived consumer benefits and market acceptance of high-tech SRCs. Using the concepts of risk, resources, and control, this study proposes a theoretical framework, tested with data about Internet banking in the United States. The results show that integration decisions have important, counterintuitive consequences. Specifically technical integration leads to higher perceived consumer benefits and thus greater market acceptance, whereas brand integration lowers the market acceptance of a new SRC.     

Corporate brand identity co-creation in business-to-business contexts

Traditionally, corporate brand identity was considered to be directed and controlled by managers. However, more recent research has begun to recognize the limits of this view, which has led to the emergence of a stakeholder-driven, dynamic perspective, in which multiple stakeholders co-create diverse corporate brand meanings. This perspective argues that while managers have influence over the essence of the corporate brand, other stakeholders imprint and share their own interpretations. To better understand the process of corporate brand identity co-creation, we used a case study method with multiple cases, involving five small and medium sized business-to-business (B2B) corporate brands. We specifically chose B2B corporate brands, because they are often built on long-term and close relationships with diverse stakeholders, serving as a solid ground for illustrating the process of co-creation. To obtain the necessary depth of insight, we conducted 37 semi-structured interviews. Our research shows that corporate brand identity co-creation in B2B contexts is an ongoing dynamic process where multiple internal and external stakeholders engage in four different but interrelated performances: communicating; internalizing; contesting; and elucidating.     

The Role of Marketing Resources in Radical Innovation Activity: Antecedents and Payoffs

While radical product innovations represent significant engines of firm growth, questions remain over whether marketing helps or hurts (1) a firm's radical product innovation activity and (2) its rewards from radical product innovation activity. By attaching an attention‐based view of the firm to a market‐based assets view of marketing, this paper examines the role of three marketing resources—market knowledge, reputation, and relational resources—on radical innovation activity. Our conceptual framework posits differentiated effects among marketing resources as antecedents of radical innovation activity and as moderators of its impact on firms' financial performance. Using a survey of a broad set of high‐tech business‐to‐business (B2B) firms to test hypotheses, it is found that firms with strong relational resources enjoy a higher propensity for, and stronger financial rewards from, radical innovation activity. Reputational resources come with a trade‐off as they hurt the incidence of radical innovation but enhance its financial rewards. However, market knowledge resources appear to hurt both radical innovation activity and its financial rewards. Our results point to the multifaceted role of marketing in radical innovation activity, which is unlikely to come with a single benefit or liability as prior work often posits. Rather, our research heightens the alertness of managers to assess their firms' marketing strength as a bundle of stocks of several marketing resources. Managers must understand the distinct benefits and drawbacks of each resource in developing and launching radical innovations. Our research underscores the differentiated value of marketing in radical innovation activity in B2B high‐tech contrary to the entrenched idea of a limited or even stifling role of marketing in this context.     

Sharing is the name of the game: Exploring the role of social media communication practices on B2B customer relationships in the life sciences industry

The inclusion of social media as a communication channel in a vendor's B2B digital marketing strategy is growing in importance. Understanding the effect of such practices upon customer relationships is crucial for firms as they increasingly engage in this way. This paper presents and tests a model that explores the effect of vendor social media communication practices upon trust and loyalty in B2B customer relationships. A study using quantitative data from 196 business customers of a United States life sciences firm is reported. The model indicates that trust and loyalty are influenced by a) the social media shared beliefs between the vendor and the customer; b) the nature of the vendor's social media communication with the customer; and c) the extent to which the vendor's social media communication practices enable effective customer-to-customer communication. Trust is found to have a mediating role between these indicators and loyalty. Managerial implications are discussed.     

Navigating the demands of increasing customer participation through firm and individual job resources

Many firms are increasing the amount of customer participation required in B2B sales in efforts to improve firm performance. Unfortunately, little is known regarding how increasing customer participation expectations effects the firm's salespeople. To address this issue, using the job demands-resources model, this study examines how increases in customer participation influence salesperson burnout and salesperson investment in resources, while accounting for the job resources of job autonomy and belief in innate selling ability. The potential moderating effects of competitive intensity are also captured. The findings, based upon a survey of 210 B2B salespeople, indicate that increasing customer participation does not increase salesperson burnout, but increases investments in resources aimed to increase salesperson professional development. Further, greater job autonomy was found to decrease salesperson burnout and increase investment in resources, with the latter being moderated by competitive intensity. Belief in innate selling ability, in contrast, was found to increase burnout and decrease investment in resources by salespeople, with the latter being moderated by competitive intensity. This study highlights the multiple positive and negative effects of increasing customer participation in B2B selling, providing new insights for how firms can set policies to enhance salesperson well-being and effectiveness in a B2B setting.     

Dynamic capability and IJV performance: The effect of exploitation and exploration capabilities

Drawing on the dynamic capabilities perspective as the overarching theoretical underpinning in the context of IJVs, this study investigates (1) how exploitation capability and exploration capability as two critical building blocks of dynamic capabilities are independently and interactively associated with IJVs’ financial and competitive outcomes in an emerging economy, and (2) how the two context variables (IJV autonomy and organizational culture distance of IJV partners) moderate the effect of exploitation capability and exploration capability on IJV performance. Using a sample of 102 IJVs in an emerging economy, this study finds general support for the theoretical model. Results suggest that IJVs in a foreign emerging economy tend to perform better when they possess greater abilities to exploit current resources as well as by dynamically renewing their competitive advantage. Moreover, exploitation capability and exploration capability interact in such a way that they “reinforce” each other. Lastly, the contribution of exploitation capability and exploration capability to IJV performance is stronger when IJVs enjoy greater autonomy and when the organizational culture distance between partners of IJVs is small. Theoretical and managerial contributions are discussed and limitations and future research are explored.     

Why history matters: Micro-and macro-foundations in a corporate de alio spinoff

Much of the discussion surrounding dynamic capabilities has focused on mature and established corporate enterprises escaping core rigidities. Less understood is the role of dynamic capabilities in corporate spinoffs that represent a category of de alio (“from others”). These firms offer a novel context when investigating dynamic capabilities, as they are technically “new” firms yet demonstrate a level of establishment due to privileged access to resources from a corporate parent. We explore how incubation and attachment to a parent influences tacit and explicit transfer of resources and supports sensing and seizing in the early growth corporate de alio spinoff, promoting opportunities for transformation as the spinoff matures. Through an analysis of a longitudinal, empirical, illustrative case, we integrate Garnsey's Penrosean-inspired Theory of the Early Growth of the Firm with Teece's dynamic capabilities framework to illustrate how micro- and macro-foundations of dynamic capabilities unfold in a corporate de alio spinoff during incubation and following spinoff. This study builds an understanding of how corporate de alio spinoffs can more successfully navigate ambiguity by leveraging dynamic capabilities, the foundations of which emerge in a parent entity.     

From catalog to Web: B2B multi-channel marketing strategy

The literature on catalog buying is heavily skewed to the business to consumer (B2C) area and increasingly is orientated to the multi-channel world of shopping choice, including online, catalog and store options. Previous studies have primarily been single equation explanations of catalog decisions, whereas the current study takes a hierarchical or systems approach to decision making in B2B marketing. A two-equation structural equation model (SEM) has been designed and a large sample (n = 1809) of business customers used to test the model. Price and catalog layout were seen to play a particularly important role in explaining buyer behavior. Additional multiple regression analysis was carried out to understand why purchasing agents who currently use one channel (catalog), would make use of a second, new channel (Web) in the future. The study identifies five key motivating factors for consumers in adopting a new (Web) channel for purchasing purposes. The study also identifies the switching costs that act as a barrier to adopting a Web channel.     

Network location and learning: the influence of network resources and firm capabilities on alliance formation

This paper presents a dynamic, firm‐level study of the role of network resources in determining alliance formation. Such resources inhere not so much within the firm but reside in the interfirm networks in which firms are placed. Data from extensive fieldwork show that by influencing the extent to which firms have access to information about potential partners, such resources are an important catalyst for new alliances, especially because alliances entail considerable hazards. This study also assesses the importance of firms’ capabilities with alliance formation and material resources as determinants of their alliance decisions. I test this dynamic framework and its hypotheses about the role of time‐varying network resources and firm capabilities with comprehensive longitudinal multi‐industry data on the formation of strategic alliances by a panel of firms between 1970 and 1989. The results confirm field observations that accumulated network resources arising from firm participation in the network of accumulated prior alliances are influential in firms’ decisions to enter into new alliances. This study highlights the importance of network resources that firms derive from their embeddedness in networks for explaining their strategic behavior. Copyright © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Developing business customer engagement through social media engagement-platforms: An integrative S-D logic/RBV-informed model

While the service-dominant logic-informed nature of customer engagement in social media has been recognized in business-to-consumer contexts, little is known regarding this theoretical interface in business-to-business (B2B) settings. Insight into business customer engagement (BCE), as expressed through social media and/or other B2B engagement-platforms (e.g. trade shows) and its S-D logic-based antecedents and consequences thus remains limited. Based on the observed gap, this paper integrates the theoretical entities of BCE, B2B social media engagement-platforms, and S-D logic and through its analyses, uncovers the related importance of the resource-based view (RBV) in affecting this association. An integrative S-D logic/RBV-informed model is developed, where BCE denotes an industrial customer's investment of operant/operand resources in supplier interactions via particular B2B engagement-platforms, including social media. The model considers business customer actors and resources in driving business customer resource integration, business customer resource integration effectiveness, and business customer resource integration efficiency, which act as BCE antecedents that extend to coincide with BCE. BCE, in turn, triggers business customer cocreation and relationship productivity, which subsequently, contribute to business customer relationship quality and ultimately, supplier performance. A set of research propositions is derived from the model, which serves as a useful guide for further research. Managerial implications focused on B2B social media marketing are discussed, before we conclude with an overview of research limitations and future research directions.     

TOWARDS AN ATTENTION-BASED VIEW OF THE FIRM

The central argument is that firm behavior is the result of how firms channel and distribute the attention of their decision-makers. What decision-makers do depends on what issues and answers they focus their attention on. What issues and answers they focus on depends on the specific situation and on how the firm’s rules, resources, and relationships distribute various issues, answers, and decision-makers into specific communications and procedures. The paper develops these theoretical principles into a model of firm behavior and presents its implications for explaining firm behavior and adaptation. © 1997 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Buyer-supplier matching in online B2B marketplace: An empirical study of small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs)

Mitigating perceived uncertainty and risk is critical for successful exchanges in an online B2B marketplace. However, scant empirical research has been devoted to the topic, and even less to small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). We investigate the use of quality signals and recommendations to foster buyer-supplier matching in an online B2B marketplace of SMEs. Unique proprietary data from a leading B2B e-commerce platform suggest that such a matching is significantly related to signals of SME buyers' quality and credibility embedded in how projects are described. Moreover, appropriately designed recommendation system can increase the matching rate because it helps reduce buyers' information overload. This research highlights the importance of integrating online channel data with traditional offline channel data to accurately assess the drivers of buyer-supplier matching. Our findings provide valuable insights into how to design and manage an online B2B marketplace for SMEs to yield more successful matches.     

A service design perspective on the stakeholder engagement journey during B2B innovation: Challenges and future research agenda

Innovation in business-to-business (B2B) contexts deals with highly dynamic, complex, and heterogeneous constellations of stakeholders with a diversity of goals, motives, and capabilities that further challenge successful management of B2B innovation processes and outcomes. Complex challenges, such as sustainability and digitization trends, push these B2B firms to embrace new innovation methods that help them manage disruptive change. Service design thinking has emerged as an innovation management practice emphasizing a human-centered innovation process of user interactions, creativity, and learning mindsets. In this article, we aim to evaluate the challenges and develop a research agenda on how service design can effectively enable stakeholders' engagement during the B2B innovation process. We argue that to advance service design opportunities for stakeholder engagement, we need to address the unique complexities and challenges of stakeholder engagement during innovation from a systemic and dynamic process perspective. From a systemic perspective, we zoom in on the building blocks of stakeholder engagement and address multi-level stakeholder engagement platforms (i.e., innovation networks). From a dynamic process perspective, we treat stakeholder engagement as an emerging process and zoom in on the temporal and relational connections and hybrid orchestration to allow for both structural and emerging stakeholder engagement during innovation. We develop a stakeholder engagement journey in which we integrate service and innovation stages and propose how service design activities can support and facilitate the aforementioned challenges and complexities. Finally, we identify concrete research questions and, accordingly, develop a research agenda for future research on stakeholder engagement in B2B innovation trajectories.     

How social media applications affect B2B communication and improve business performance in SMEs

Social Media Apps (SMA) are widely used to facilitate individual communications. In company situations, they are utilized as a channel to communicate with their customers. However, studies examining how SMA have been utilized in the Business-to-Business (Social Media Benchmarking Report, 2014) context are lacking. Using a model based on Media Synchronicity Theory (MST), we present one of the first empirical studies investigating the relationship between the capabilities of SMA (transmission velocity, parallelism, symbol sets, rehearsability, and reprocessability) and B2B communication and business performance. Five case studies based on face-to-face interviews with the senior managers/owners of SME (Small and Medium Enterprises) were conducted. The data were analyzed and the findings confirmed the SMA media capabilities as explained by MST. The findings also revealed a missing SMA capability, that of information security and control, which has been added to the proposed model and which may be an important addition to MST. This study calls for more research to verify this finding.     

Optimal pricing and order policies with B2B product returns for fashion products

We study optimal pricing and order policies in supply chain management of fashion products (e.g., a fashion apparel category) with consideration of product returns between supply chain partners (B2B). In order to study channel performance and optimal policies, two stochastic models for centralized channel and decentralized channel are, respectively, developed to handle new fashion and off-season product sales. In the centralized channel, closed-form solutions for optimal order and pricing decisions are proposed for new fashion products. Further, in a decentralized channel, the Stackelberg game model is proposed to derive the optimal Stackelberg equilibrium solution, and then a buy-back contract is designed to coordinate the channel. We also perform parameter analysis on performance of the two channel models. Numerical analysis is finally presented to validate our theoretical results and compare channel performances.