The digital marketing capabilities gap

Over the past two decades, digitalization has revolutionized not only consumer marketing but also industrial marketing. Both industrial marketing scholars and industrial marketers seek insights to understand how our knowledge and practice of digital marketing has been structured and configured. To address this gap, we adopt the resource-based perspective as an organizing framework and systematically review 129 articles spanning two decades of research to identify different digital marketing capabilities in industrial firms. From this analysis, we identify four themes: channels, social media, digital relationships, and digital technologies. We then stress-test this knowledge with managerial practices by conducting an online survey of 169 managers, designed to establish the repertoire of current and future marketing capability needs of industrial firms. Herein, we identify two marketing capabilities gaps: the practice gap—which identifies the deficit between managers' ‘current’ practices and their ‘ideal’ digital marketing capabilities; and, the knowledge gap—which demonstrates a significant divide between the digital marketing transformations in industrial firms and the extant scholarly knowledge that underpins this. Based on these results, we build an agenda for future research on digital marketing capabilities.     

Impact of purchasing trends on industrial marketers

Purchasing departments have undergone dramatic changes during the past decade. This article examines key characteristics that changed during the 1970s including the purchasers' view of effective salespersons and women in purchasing. It is important that industrial marketers better understand these changes and subsequently implement marketing efforts that compliment the purchasing environment of the 1980s.     

Marketing research by a small industrial firm: A case study

There is a growing need today for industrial marketers to conduct marketing research and use the results in making profitable business decisions. This paper describes a marketing research study conducted by a small industrial firm and discusses the nature and extent of its impact on the firm's operations. Several implications and practical guidelines are derived for industrial marketers in general, based on the firm's marketing research experience.     

Marketing in the emerging era of build-to-order manufacturing

Build-to-order (BTO) and lean manufacturing processes are changing the paradigms under which businesses-to-business marketers operate. For example, BTO processes allow marketers to customize products to a greater degree, creating a competitive advantage over traditional manufacturing. Business-to-business (B2B) marketers who take advantage of the operational efficiencies and effectiveness that emerge from BTO are outperforming firms that utilize traditional manufacturing processes in multiple industries, such as office furniture, personal computers, and windows. This paper examines the long-term impact of the adoption of build-to-order manufacturing strategies on the marketing function and identifies marketing strategies associated with successful BTO companies. Throughout, the paper highlights managerial implications and proposes directions for future research.     

Support service is key for technology transfer to China

China, under the direction of its new political leadership, is extremely interested in purchasing the most up-to-date technology. However, still being a less-developed nation, there is some doubt about her ability to absorb this high-level technology. If the U.S. industrial marketers hesitate to sell this technology, China will buy it from other industrialized countries. The authors maintain that the U.S. industrial marketers must sell the high-level technology to China. However, they also must make sure that this technology will be transferred successfully. In order to assure the success, the authors suggest that special attention be paid to the development of marketing support service systems as highly technical industrial products are sold to China. These systems will at least temporarily overcome existing barriers to technology transfer and hence will facilitate smooth and enduring technology transfers in the long run.     

Why integrating purchasing with marketing is both inevitable and beneficial

The shift away from manufacturing in Western developed economies has resulted in economies in which service industries are dominant. Marketing itself has undergone a paradigmatic shift from a focus on the exchange of goods to the provision of capabilities. This paper examines the relationship between marketing and purchasing as a result of the shift from product- to capability-focused commerce. We suggest that the marketing and purchasing departments will become closer due to two major reasons. First, as marketers increasingly become solution-oriented rather than product-focused, they will need to source products and services from third-party vendors and will require deeper involvement of the purchasing department. Second, with the emergence of customer-centric marketing coupled with build-to-order manufacturing, marketing and purchasing will have to be better aligned to deliver solutions to customers. These new dimensions in the marketing–purchasing interaction will also lead to changes in the selection, training, and recruitment of marketers and purchasers as well as their roles in the supply chain. We elaborate on these changes likely to occur in business-to-business organizations and along with implications for managers.     

Antecedents of functional integration during new product development: The purchasing–marketing link

In response to different economic and business trends, companies are becoming increasingly dependent on external resources and capabilities as they seek to cater for an ever more complex and challenging demand. Such dependence has led an important group of scholars to draw attention to the inevitable integration of the purchasing and marketing functions. We stress here the need for such integration during new product development, and seek the mechanisms that may promote purchasing–marketing integration. Accordingly, this study describes two essential components underlying the concept of purchasing–marketing integration, and tests the effect of different integration mechanisms gathered from the literature on these two components. The model is tested on a sample of 141 Spanish industrial companies. Our results show that each one of these integration mechanisms varies in its effectiveness in promoting each key component of purchasing–marketing integration. Taking these asymmetric effects into account is crucial for selecting the appropriate purchasing and marketing integration devices within companies.     

Classifying a customer as a national account

A recent article [Stevenson and Page, Industrial Marketing Management 8, 94–100 (1979)] addressed the issue of how industrial marketers determine if their firms can use national account marketing. Once that decision is made, a next logical step is to determine which customers should be classified as national accounts. This article discusses appropriate classification criteria that industrial marketers can use to make such decisions. The information presented here is based on a study of national account marketing.     

Buyer information sources in the capital equipment industry

To maximize the effectiveness and efficiency of industrial marketing communications, industrial marketers should provide product and/or service information to their customers via the communications channel considered most important by industrial buyers. This study attempts to determine if industrial marketers and industrial buyers attach equal importance to five channels of communication. The findings raise some important questions regarding traditional practices in industrial marketing communications.     

An exploratory study of the Internet as an industrial communication tool: Examining buyers' perceptions

A thorough understanding of the impact of the Internet on industrial purchase decisions is of critical importance for industrial marketers seeking to incorporate the Internet in their overall communication strategy. Accordingly, this study examines (1) the degree to which purchasing professionals perceive the Internet as useful, (2) how purchasing professionals are using the Internet for communication activities, (3) how the Internet compares to other promotional tools in influencing buyers' purchase decisions, and (4) whether differences among buyers can be identified relative to the perceived influence of suppliers' websites. The results provide some practical implications for industrial marketers regarding the use of the Internet relative to other promotional tools.     

A service perspective on business relationships: The value creation, interaction and marketing interface

Adopting a service perspective or logic on business directs suppliers' focus in business relationships towards engaging with their customers' business processes. The purpose of this article is to analyze implications for value creation and marketing of adopting a service logic in business relationships. In the article it is demonstrated that a service perspective is multi-dimensional, enabling the mutual creation of value, with service as a mediating factor in that process. It is argued that value creation, purchasing, usage and marketing are intertwined processes. Here supplier-customer interactions are in a focal position. This perspective enables marketers to better understand how to develop and extend service offerings through assistance to customers' processes relevant to their businesses. Therefore, the underpinning logic of industrial interactions is analyzed in detail, extending marketing's conventional boundaries.     

Towards a typology of collusive industrial networks: Dark and shadow networks

The prevailing understanding of collusive B2B networks is primarily based on the theories of industrial economists and organizational criminologists. ‘Successful’ collusive industrial networks (such as price-fixing cartels) have been seen to endure due to formal managerial structures of coordination and control. In this paper, we seek to transcend and challenge the understanding of these illegal forms of co-opetition by drawing on evidence from an in-depth examination of four price-fixing cartels that were facilitated chiefly by marketers. Our contribution introduces the notion of ‘shadow networks’ (networks where although attempts are made to ensure secrecy, multilateral modes of network structure dominate akin to ‘normal’ managerial endeavours such as joint ventures) and ‘dark networks’ (networks which appear more opaque and secretive through the adoption of bilateral modes of network structure and limited bureaucracy) to illustrate the types of collusive network forms that may exist. In addition, this allows us to build a deeper understanding of collusive network forms and related inter-firm interaction for an industrial marketing audience. We provide implications for marketing practice, theory, and policy. Specifically, we outline how organizations and the marketing function can perform self-administered antitrust audits in order to help avoid breaches of antitrust. Further, we consider the importance of the two forms of collusive inter-firm networks uncovered where marketers have attempted to render these secret from antitrust agencies, introducing a relatively new line of inquiry to the industrial marketing literature.     

Pricing practices in two industries

Although a critical part of marketing decision making, very little has been written about industrial pricing policy and strategy. This article has three objectives: First, to report the pricing practices of the chemical and construction industries; Second, to compare their pricing policies; and third, to develop a simple pricing framework for industrial marketers. The results of this study are interesting and somewhat unexpected. The buyer and his behavior only play a small part in pricing policy. A pricing framework or model is presented in a logical and systematic way.     

Processes and integration in the interaction of purchasing and marketing: Considering synergy and symbiosis

Effective integration of both purchasing and marketing functions is central to effective value creation and alignment of an organization with its business environment. Rapidly changing environments create gaps in the value creation process that compromises the delivery of value to the customer and risk misalignment of value propositions to their needs. Despite the clear imperative for research in this area, the extant literature is partial and delivers limited coherence. Ours is a theoretical article that—in drawing on previous literature—introduces the new work collected in this special issue and considers this against our own empirical evidence. We present a framework that maps out the landscape of internal organizational integration with a particular emphasis on purchasing and marketing integration. Implications for theory and managers are explored.     

How marketers argue for business – Exploring the rhetorical nature of industrial marketing work

This paper takes a rhetorical approach to the study of everyday marketing work. It seeks to understand how marketers make sense of the work they do, what discourse is used, and with what rhetorical effect. The study is based on interviews, observations and daily interaction with five marketers involved in marketing and selling of consulting services. It was found that these marketers draw on relationship discourse and customer need discourse – among others – when arguing for business. These discourses could be understood as contradictory discursive forces used by marketers to talk up suitable rhetorical selves, by means of which they accomplish their work. As a whole, this paper provides an illustration of the rhetorical nature of marketing, and discuss theoretical implications, aiming to expand the intellectual agenda for future studies of marketing work that takes marketers' use of language seriously.     

trends in Internet-based business-to-business marketing

The Internet is changing the transactional paradigms under which businesses-to-business marketers operate. Business-to-business marketers that take advantage of the operational efficiencies and effectiveness that emerge from utilizing the Internet in transactions are outperforming firms that utilize traditional transactional processes. As an example, Dell computers, by utilizing business-to-business processes that take advantage of the Internet, has gained the largest market share in the PC business when compared to traditional manufacturers such as Compaq. This paper first examines the genesis of the Internet movement in business-to-business markets. The long-term impact of the increase of business-to-business utilization of the Internet on the marketing theory and marketing process is then discussed. Finally, managerial implications and directions for future research are highlighted.     

The effects of purchasing proactivity on value creation and supply risk reduction in sourcing projects: Implications for marketers' capabilities

In many organizations, the role of purchasing is in a transition from a reactive order taker, into a proactive and internally integrated business partner. Building on a Resource-Based View and Capability-Based View, this study explores how purchasing professionals' involvement and proactive efforts in sourcing processes affect sourcing project outcomes, in terms of both value creation and supply risk reduction. The authors gathered data on 112 sourcing projects from a large, private financial services company with in-depth and structured interviews with key stakeholders. A structural model deploying the research hypotheses was analyzed using the Partial Least Squares technique. The results reveal that, driven by early involvement of and responsibility granted to the purchasing professional, purchasing proactivity enhances value creation and supply risk reduction sourcing outcomes. Specifically, proactivity mediates the effect of purchasing's involvement on value creation.This study empirically establishes the importance of purchasing proactivity, serving as critical capability of purchasing professionals. Following a dyadic logic, this impacts industrial marketers. More specifically, when purchasers build capabilities to show proactive behavior to enhance value creation and risk reduction, marketers need to develop capabilities to facilitate purchasers in their endeavors.     

Fields of opportunity: How marketers design the transaction game with transaction field maps

While the importance of transaction institutions, or rules, has long been established in the area of marketing governance, marketers and academics alike would benefit from guidance in the strategic use of the rules of the transaction game. This is particularly important in B2B and industrial markets where innovations in the rule-making environment have a significant effect on innovation. Strategically, the organization achieves its customer objectives by creating arenas for transacting, termed transaction fields, in which social actors transact. The fundamental argument is that organizations create transaction fields to depict the benefits of transacting to customers. Accordingly, managers must focus on strategic transactions; those that fundamentally change the way that transacting takes place in the transaction field. Using a historical case of the American cotton factor, this research demonstrates how marketers overcome factors that limit transacting by mapping their actions in transaction fields using rules. This specialization may result in the emergence of marketing intermediaries and lead to competitive advantage.     

Barriers of purchasing departments' involvement in marketing service procurement

A considerable part of firms' marketing services are supplied by external providers, e.g. advertisement agencies, printing houses, trade fair exhibition builders. Although a large spend category, low involvement of purchasing departments prevails during the procurement decision process. This paper develops a conceptual model of purchasing departments' involvement in marketing service procurement along the dimensions “breadth along process” and “depth of integration”, thus contributing to the measurement of purchasing departments' involvement. Drawing on the findings of a case study, we further propose that the impact of purchasing departments' involvement on procurement success is moderated by procurement complexity, and the duration of the relationship between the purchasing and marketing employees. In addition, barriers to purchasing departments' involvement are conceptualized as lack of skills, lack of motivation, and lack of opportunity.     

Strategic business marketing developments in the New Europe: Retrospect and prospect

The unification of Europe is causing considerable effects on industrial marketing strategy. Roughly ten years ago the Industrial Marketing Management journal published a study on the expected consequences of the European Union (EU) single market. In the current study, we investigate the actual results of the single market formation on industrial marketing in the EU and compare them to the expectations noted by industrial marketers a decade earlier. We find that the effects differ markedly from those anticipated and that they have important implications for business marketing practice in the EU.