Growth hacking: Insights on data-driven decision-making from three firms

Theoretical backgroundThe work explores how Big Data analysis can reshape marketing decision-making in B2B sector. Deriving from Data-Driven Decision-Making (DDDM) approach, the Growth Hacking model is employed to investigate the role of cognitive computing and big data analytics in redefining business processes.PurposeThe main objectives of the study are: 1) to assess how a data-driven orientation to the use of big data analytics and cognitive computing can reframe marketing decisions in B2B segment; 2) to explore whether the adoption Growth Hacking can be helpful in exploiting the opportunities offered by big data analytics and cognitive computing in B2B marketing.MethodologyThe paper is based on Action Research (AR) methodology that permits researchers to participate actively in the observation of businesses and to examine how decisions are undertaken and managed over time.ResultsThe main findings allow identifying the most common strategies and tactics employed in three companies operating in different B2B sectors to exploit the opportunities offered by cognitive computing and big data analytics according to a data-driven marketing approach. Based on the application of the Growth Hacking model, the tools of analytics and the main objectives, outcomes and implications on marketing decision-making are revealed.OriginalityThe identification of the main objectives and outcomes produced across the three dimensions of the Growth Hacking model (data analysis, marketing and programming) can help academics and practitioners to understand the main levers to attain marketing goals, such as the enhancement of relationship with customers (CRM), continuous learning and development of new products and potential innovation.     

A dynamic capability view of marketing analytics: Evidence from UK firms

While marketing analytics plays an important role in generating insights from big data to improve marketing decision-making and firm competitiveness, few academic studies have investigated the mechanisms through which it can be used to achieve sustained competitive advantage. To close this gap, this study draws on the dynamic capability view to posit that a firm can attain sustained competitive advantage from its sensing, seizing and reconfiguring capabilities, which are manifested by the use of marketing analytics, marketing decision-making, and product development management. This study also examines the impact of the antecedents of marketing analytics use on marketing related processes. The analysis of a survey of 221 UK firm managers demonstrates: (a) the positive impact of marketing analytics use on both marketing decision-making and product development management; (b) the effect of the latter two on sustained competitive advantage; (c) the indirect effect of data availability on both marketing decision-making and production development management; and (d) the indirect effect of managerial support on marketing decision-making. The research model proposed in this study provides insights into how marketing analytics can be used to achieve sustained competitive advantage.     

Big data analytics for supply chain relationship in banking

This paper reports how a commercial bank in Asia uses big data analytic as a tool to explore the internal B2B data to improve supply chain finance and the efficiency of marketing tactics and campaigns. A case study was conducted by analyzing two types of supply chain relationships: (1) supply chain relationships in the credit reports; (2) e-wiring transactions among supply chain companies. The results show that big data analytics is very useful in terms of improving the commercial banks' marketing and risk management performances. The case study also set a good example for B2B firms seeking to understand how they could leverage big data analytics to differentiate customer solutions, sustain profitability and generate new business values. Theorical and practical implications are also discussed.     

Analytics in the era of big data: The digital transformations and value creation in industrial marketing

Big data analytics has been a topical area in the past decade. Despite it is emphased as a promising tool for the B2B sectors, there is a short of academic studies about this phenomenon in the industrial markets. Existing big data analytics focuses more on the consumers' marketing aspect, while in fact both the consumers' data and the machine-generated transaction data can be gathered and analysed at the interorganisational level. Subsequently, there is a need to increase the attention on the B2B aspects of big data analytics and the interactions of stakeholders. This paper, therefore, investigates the digital transformation enabled by big data analytics in the industrial markets and provides a conceptual framework. It solicits research articles that provide insights into various industrial contexts of this topic and applied both qualitative and quantitative approaches to identify the big data gathering and applications for value creation.     

The transition from product to service in business markets: An agenda for academic inquiry

In recent years, industrial manufacturers around the world have deployed growing efforts in developing services in addition to their traditional product business in order to secure long-term growth and to remain competitive in the marketplace. Against this background, the present article introduces the reader to this special issue. It first recalls key aspects of the emerging service-dominant logic of marketing and examines how it relates to the business marketing field. It then illustrates the challenges faced by top executives of industrial companies in the transition from a product-centric to a service-centric business perspective through an interview with the managing director of ThyssenKrupp Service AG. After discussing how the articles included in this special issue advance the extant literature on industrial services marketing, the article finally develops a number of directions for future research on services in business markets.     

You have not been archiving emails for no reason! Using big data analytics to cluster B2B interest in products and services and link clusters to financial performance

The potential of big data analytics when it comes to gaining business insights, such as market trends and consumer preferences, has captured the interest of both scholars and business practitioners. However, the extant literature has so far provided limited empirical evidence to demonstrate how big data analytics can create business value. To address this research gap, this paper followed a novel big data analytical approach that involved analysing email archives about product/services demand clusters in a B2B setting. We analysed 621 k emails exchanged between 2009 and 2018. We identified a number of discussion clusters that were considered proxies for the interest buyers expressed in the products/services on offer. These clusters and associated discussion trends were linked to the company's revenues and financial performance, showing good predictive power. In doing this, we have demonstrated how widely available data, such as emails, which all companies have, can be used to underpin new methods for the early identification and monitoring of product demand trends, informing marketing strategies.     

Role of big data and social media analytics for business to business sustainability: A participatory web context

The digital transformation is an accumulation of various digital advancements, such as the transformation of the web phenomenon. The participatory web that allows for active user engagement and gather intelligence has been widely recognised as a value add tool by organisations of all shapes and sizes to improve business productivity and efficiency. However, its ability to facilitate sustainable business-to-business (B2B) activities has lacked focus in the business and management literature to date. This qualitative research is exploratory in nature and fills this gap through findings arising from interviews of managers and by developing taxonomies that highlight the capability of participatory web over passive web to enable different firms to engage in business operations. For this purpose, two important interrelated functions of business i.e. operations and marketing have been mapped against three dimensions of sustainability. Consequently, this research demonstrates the ability of big data and social media analytics within a participatory web environment to enable B2B organisations to become profitable and remain sustainable through strategic operations and marketing related business activities. The research findings will be useful for both academics and managers who are interested in understanding and further developing the business use of participatory web tools to achieve business sustainability. Hence, this may be considered as a distinct way of attaining sustainability.     

Fostering B2B sales with customer big data analytics

This study focuses on the use of big data analytics in managing B2B customer relationships and examines the effects of big data analytics on customer relationship performance and sales growth using a multi-industry dataset from 417 B2B firms. The study also examines whether analytics culture within a firm moderates these effects. The study finds that the use of customer big data significantly fosters sales growth (i.e. monetary performance outcomes) and enhances the customer relationship performance (non-monetary performance outcomes). However, the latter effect is stronger for firms which have an analytics culture which supports marketing analytics, whereas the former effect remains unchanged regardless of the analytics culture. The study empirically confirms that customer big data analytics improves customer relationship performance and sales growth in B2B firms.     

Plant location and place marketing: understanding the process from the business customer's perspective

In the past decade, there has been an increased interest in place marketing, especially as countries and locations have been spending more money to encourage firms to locate their offices and plant locations in the place marketer's area. In this paper, we examine the place marketing from the perspective of the marketer and that of the business customer, specifically in the area of communication and information distribution (in the era of the Internet). In literature, place marketing strategies vary from the very simple to the very sophisticated. Through examination of present marketing and communication practices of place marketers, we find that these strategies are unplanned or “seat of the pants.” We also find that the primary reason for the lack of deliberate and targeted strategies is a lack of understanding of customer decision-making processes. We suggest that only by understanding differences in business customer segments of the market can place marketers become more efficient and effective in winning plant placements. Using data from business customer decision-making processes, we attempt to close the knowledge gap.     

Library support for industrial marketing research

The literature of business and management often discusses the need for timely information as a prerequisite to decision-making and planning. The role of the corporate library in supporting management's information needs has rarely been discussed in professional management literature. This article examines the library's role in supporting industrial marketing research. Special reference is made to new technologies that enhance traditional library services.     

Marketing ecosystem: An outside-in view for sustainable advantage

In the modern business environment, consumers are increasingly influenced by megatrends involving marketplace, technology, socioeconomics, geopolitics, and natural environment. Simultaneously, the data and insights that can inform consumer attitudes and behaviors often reside outside of firms' direct control. Consciously incorporating these interdependent factors into firms' decision-making is essential for adaptability and sustainable profitability.Building on the “outside-in” perspective, we propose that firm strategies should be informed through the lens of the marketing ecosystem that considers the interrelated and dynamic megatrends. By leveraging advances in data and technology, firms can sense-make the marketplace by extracting insights from massive amounts of diverse consumer data with modern-day analytics. By mapping out the megatrends with marketing analytics, firms can 1) more accurately predict consumers' changing preferences and formulate appropriate strategies to engage with them; and 2) become more market-adaptable and competitive in the present and the future.To deliver sustainably compelling value to customers, firms should adopt an ecosystem mindset and cooperate with various stakeholders. A broad-thinking, agile, and humble firm culture can enable the development of more robust outside-in capabilities. We elaborate on the megatrends in the interconnected world of the marketing ecosystem, and propose emerging research directions in each area.     

B2B service innovation and global industrial service management

This special edition of IMM aims to develop knowledge and generate new insights and applications of service innovation in B2B context, and global industrial services management relevant to scholars and managers. This article briefly discusses the theme of the special issue, the compelling rationale for putting together the body of scholarship around the topic, and brief introduction of the articles featured in the issue, and their contributions to industrial marketing/B2B discourse. It also highlights some key future research directions.     

Economic Geography and Business Networks: Creating a Dialogue between Disciplines: An Introduction to the Special Issue

This introductory article presents an outline of the papers accepted for this special issue. The Guest Editors provide an overview of the work within industrial marketing where synthesis between economic geography and industrial marketing literature has occurred. A discussion of the most synthesised areas of economic geography is advanced and each article is then discussed, compared and contrasted with other articles in the special issue and with articles within industrial marketing that have previously synthesized concepts drawn from economic geography. Within this narrative, the Guest Editor’s propose an agenda for future interdisciplinary research at what they refer to as the ‘nexus of interest’ between the disciplines.     

Problem formulation in industrial marketing research

Marketing research is achieving increasingly greater recognition in the industrial marketing field as one of the major tools to assist management in decision-making processes. Its position in consumer goods marketing has long been well established, and its use has been widespread. At the present time industrial marketing research is becoming more accepted as a normal part of marketing management whose efforts are directed to the industrial markets for goods and services.     

How to Build an AI Climate-Driven Service Analytics Capability for Innovation and Performance in Industrial Markets?

AI climate-driven service analytics capability has been anecdotally argued as a viable strategy to enhance service innovation and market performance in B2B markets. While AI climate refers to the shared perceptions of policies, procedures, and practices to support AI initiatives, cognitive service analytics capability refers to the analytical insights driven by AI climate and augmented by both machines and humans to make marketing decisions. However, there is limited knowledge on the antecedents of such analytics capabilities and their overall effects on service innovation and market performance. Drawing on service analytics literature and the microfoundations of dynamic capability theory, this study fills this research gap using in-depth interviews (n = 30) and a survey (n = 276) of service analytics managers within the AI climate in Australia. The findings confirm the five microfoundations of cognitive service analytics capabilities (cognitive technology, cognitive information, cognitive problem solving, cognitive knowledge & skills, cognitive training & development). The findings also highlight the significant mediating effect of service innovation in the relationship between analytics climate and market performance and cognitive service analytics capability and market performance.     

Customer involvement in big data analytics and its impact on B2B innovation

Extant literature assumes that customers mainly serve as passive data providers and that firms take responsibility for big data analytics. In line with a current trend in real-world practice, this research, based on the open innovation literature, challenges this assumption and argues that customers can have more engagement in big data analytics. The authors distinguish two constructs: Customer as Data Provider (CDP) and Customer as Data Analyst (CDA). The former is consistent with the mainstream view that customers serve as the data source. The latter, on the other hand, sheds light on an active role customers play in big data analytics – that is, customers participate in a co-creation process where they acquire, analyze and act on big data. Using survey data of 148 Business-to-Business (B2B) innovation projects, the authors find that both types of customer involvement facilitate B2B product innovation. Furthermore, the authors examine moderation effects of customer need tacitness and customer need diversity. Results show that customer need tacitness negatively moderates the relationship between CDP and new product performance while customer need diversity yields a positive moderation effect. Customer need tacitness is also found to positively moderate the relationship between CDA and new product performance.     

Real-time big data processing for instantaneous marketing decisions: A problematization approach

The collection of big data from different sources such as the internet of things, social media and search engines has created significant opportunities for business-to-business (B2B) industrial marketing organizations to take an analytical view in developing programmatic marketing approaches for online display advertising. Cleansing, processing and analyzing of such large datasets create challenges for marketing organizations — particularly for real-time decision making and comparative implications. Importantly, there is limited research for such interplays. By utilizing a problematization approach, this paper contributes through the exploration of links between big data, programmatic marketing and real-time processing and relevant decision making for B2B industrial marketing organizations that depend on big data-driven marketing or big data-savvy managers. This exploration subsequently encompasses appropriate big data sources and effective batch and real-time processing linked with structured and unstructured datasets that influence relative processing techniques. Consequently, along with directions for future research, the paper develops interdisciplinary dialogues that overlay computer-engineering frameworks such as Apache Storm and Hadoop within B2B marketing viewpoints and their implications for contemporary marketing practices.     

Interaction in business relationships: A time perspective

Interaction is central to the relationship framework in business markets. Yet there is some theoretical imprecision with regard to the way interaction works in time. Clarification of this nexus further develops the interaction concept and provides theoretical support for the dynamic view of business relationships being developed by the industrial marketing and purchasing (IMP) group.The role of time as a backdrop for interaction is elaborated in conjunction with the cognitive ability of humans to arrive at an understanding of interfirm interaction. This elaboration extends the concept of horizontal relationship time (i.e., past, present, future), illustrates constraints on interfirm interaction, and analytically distinguishes between interaction as exchange versus adaptation while also displaying the importance of the actor in business relationships. In addition, theoretical grounds are provided for dismissing business relationship life cycle theories. Finally, the cognitive nature of time and relationships provides a means for theory development and management implications free from cultural and normative overtones.     

Introduction to the special issue on the nature of industrial marketing work

Peter Drucker once remarked that everything degenerates into work, and if it does not degenerate into work, nothing gets done. This special issue presents our vision for generating more analytical attention to the nature of industrial marketing work and to explore ways in which future research can contribute to this nascent research area. In this introductory article we seek to scope out an agenda for taking some of the themes of industrial marketing work further. In particular, the review points to the opportunities within industrial marketing, drawing on the intersections of Margaret Archer's morphogenetic agency approach with the neoinstitutional and Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW) fields of study. It then highlights the useful contributions of the papers in this special issue. Our contribution lies in advancing new avenues for researching and, in so doing, ensuring something gets done to research this nascent area.