Marketing of competence: Exploring the resource-based content of value-for-customers through a case study analysis

In this article, we propose a competence-based view of value-for-customer in business markets. While literature in both strategy and marketing has provided many insights to understand the competence-based roots of value creation, the interface between the two areas is still largely unexplored. Moreover, while the notions of competence exchange and value creation feature strongly in the relational perspective, they occur only once relationships have been established. This begs the question whether competencies could be developed outside established relationships, and then marketed to guide customers' buying behavior. Basing on three case studies from the yarn manufacturing, IT systems, and automotive components industries, we identify key features of competence-based marketing: the alignment of supplier's competencies with the customer's business processes, the experiential communication of supplier's competencies, and the delivery of competencies to the buyer's business processes. Within the strategies for creating value-for-customers, these findings contribute to the understanding of the use of competencies to induce purchases.     

Role of competences in creating customer value: A value-creation logic approach

This paper addresses the issue through what kind of competences companies are producing value for their business customers. First, a value typology, clarifying the complex character of value, is constructed, together with suggestions on how the question of value creation can be framed. In order to understand and manage supplier-customer relationships, it essential to comprehend how both customers and suppliers perceive value and their roles in value creation. The matching of customers' and suppliers' perspectives is discussed by developing a framework depicting the business-to-business marketing types. Then the competences needed for creating value for customers and suppliers alike are examined by identifying what kind of competences are required in each marketing type.     

Managerial perceptions of service-infused IORs in China & India: A discursive view of value co-creation

This paper explores the managerial challenges facing firms seeking to build relationships with other network actors while doing business in foreign markets. By taking a critical perspective on an area of increasing importance in both manufacturing and service sectors, that of value co-creation, the paper explores how managers in different cultural contexts make sense of the notion of ‘value’ in inter-organizational B2B relationships between New Zealand service and service-infused supplier firms and buyers in China and India. From an analysis of the interview-based accounts on both sides of the buyer–seller dyad marked differences emerge regarding value-creation within managers' discourse around partnerships, collaboration and cooperation. Our findings suggest that the Indian manager's discursive use of ‘partnership’ draws on service-dominant logic in viewing this type of interaction as a means for co-creating value; they and their New Zealand suppliers are jointly involved in co-creating value within a service system, creating value-in-use. In contrast, the predominant perspective seen in the discourse of Chinese managers is the use of cooperation as a means of making transactions more cost-effective, or to fill gaps in their supply chains, resulting in the creation of transaction-based, co-production of value, which suggests a value-in-exchange orientation. In both cases, there is repeated reference to more peripheral actors whose efforts result in what we interpret as network value creation, based on their interactions with actors within the buyer–seller dyad.     

Business models: Impact on business markets and opportunities for marketing research

Business models have evolved in the context of new venture creation. By offering an entrepreneurial perspective to established marketing elements such as value propositions, value capturing and value networks, business models provide marketing discipline with both challenges and opportunities to engage with entrepreneurial environments. In particular, business models call for approaches that elucidate value-in-use of marketing offerings, reveal the performance of contracts in orchestrating value networks and identify the performance of network configurations. In this article we present some implications of and opportunities for business models for marketing research.     

It's all B2B…and beyond: Toward a systems perspective of the market

The delineation of B2B from ‘mainstream’ marketing reflects the limitations of the traditional, goods-dominant (G-D) model of exchange and a conceptualization of value creation based on the ‘producer’ versus ‘consumer’ divide. Service-dominant (S-D) logic broadens the perspective of exchange and value creation and implies that all social and economic actors engaged in exchange (e.g., firms, customers, etc.) are service-providing, value-creating enterprises; thus, in this sense, all exchange can be considered B2B. From this perspective, the contributions of B2B marketing (and other sub-disciplines) can be seen as applicable to ‘mainstream’ marketing. This generic, actor-to-actor (A2A) orientation, in turn, points toward a dynamic, networked and systems orientation to value creation. This article discusses this systems-oriented framework and elaborates the steps necessary for developing it further into a general theory of the market, informed by the marketing sub-disciplines, marketing practices, and disciplines external to marketing.     

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.     

Value in business markets: What do we know? Where are we going?

This article presents a review of the existing literature on value in business markets, from the perspective of both business marketing and purchasing and supply management, in three steps. First, some of the early research strands on value are examined including value analysis and engineering, the augmented product concept, consumer values, and economic value of customers. Then this seminal research and more recent research are categorized according to two distinct levels of analysis: the value of goods and services versus the value of buyer-supplier relationships, and different understandings of the role of business marketing and purchasing and supply are discussed. Lastly, a number of future research avenues, which can be organized around the value of products/relationships on the one hand and value analysis/creation/delivery on the other, are considered.     

Customer value anticipation, customer satisfaction and loyalty: An empirical examination

A service-dominant logic by definition is inherently customer oriented and relational, reflecting deeper and more complex connections between suppliers and customers. The service mindset driving increased collaboration enables suppliers to have deeper insights to what customers' value. Customer value perceptions are dynamic, sometimes in constant flux, necessitating anticipatory capabilities on the part of suppliers. Yet, there is a notable lack of discussion about customer value anticipation and related empirical evidence of whether or not customers care if suppliers anticipate what they value. The authors report on two survey studies that test using structural equation modeling the notion that suppliers good at anticipating what customers will value realize higher customer satisfaction and loyalty. Understanding this relationship is critical for marketing managers wrestling with allocation of limited resources. We find that customer value anticipation is a strong driver of satisfaction and loyalty, with satisfaction acting as a mediator for loyalty.     

The influence of brand image and company reputation where manufacturers market to small firms: A customer value perspective

Branding research has largely focused on consumer goods markets and only recently has attention been given to business markets. In many business markets the company's reputation has a strong influence on buying decisions which may differ from the more specific product related influence of the brand's image. In this paper we investigate these differences by testing the hypotheses about the influences of brand image and company reputation on customers' perceptions of product and service quality, customer value, and customer loyalty in a business market where there are three manufacturers marketing their brands directly to a large number of small firms. The results indicate that the brand's image has a more specific influence on the customers' perceptions of product and service quality while the company's reputation has a broader influence on perceptions of customer value and customer loyalty.     

Affinities between multi-agent systems and service-dominant logic: Interactionist implications for business marketing practice

The contrasting marketing principles of service-dominant (S-D) logic and goods-dominant (G-D) logic are examined in this article from the perspective of current research themes in the information science community. The conclusion is reached that much of the distributed multi-agent literature is complementary to the issues being explored concerning S-D logic, and that some multi-agent research may therefore be pertinent to the business marketing community. This article discusses the modelling approach of interactionism as an underlying principle of both S-D logic and multi-agent systems technology. The two domain technologies are compared, and implications for business marketing practice proposed.     

Building competences for new customer value creation: An exploratory study

Recent marketing literature suggests companies to become market driving (proactive business logic, changing the rules of the market) instead of market driven (reactive business logic, customer-led). This transformation implies that companies are able to boost their capacity to create new customer value. Based on survey data of business-to-business markets, we advance a tentative model that links competence development to new customer value creation. Although exploratory in its nature, our study exhibits that companies should build three types of competences: marketing practices for external knowledge absorption, general organizational competences and supply chain/network competences. Using cluster analysis, we are able to further link these competences to the capacity of new value creation. Four clusters are detected with different degrees of expertise in new value creation and each displaying their own profile of competences. Becoming market driving requires an integrated and balanced view on marketing practices.     

Interpersonal influence strategies in complex B2B sales and the socio-cognitive construction of relationship value

The investigation of how exactly salespeople create value at the individual level of interaction is still incomplete. While there have been lively debates on value creation and co-creation processes at the organizational level in the business marketing literature, researchers have paid much less attention to the fact that such processes almost always start at the interpersonal level of buyer-seller interactions. Through utilizing a symbolic interactionist perspective and the ethnographic research method of shadowing, the present study moves research insights into value creation in sales forward by depicting the detailed activities and tactics that influence customers’ value perceptions during the sales encounter. We complement the sales influence literature with three additional tactics: disrupt, reassure and dedicate. We also expand the framework of value creation in sales interactions by identifying three value strategies that change, strengthen or expand customer value perceptions through different socio-cognitive mechanisms.     

Searching for Relationship Value in Business Markets: Are We Missing Something?

Economic value has always been the main consideration in decisions regarding alternative courses of action in management. The relationship perspective that became popular in service and business marketing research and practice involves the application of the value concept to business relationships. Recent research in marketing on the value of relationships has been concerned with identifying the various dimensions of relationships content that can, in principle, give origin to costs or benefits for the parties involved. The way in which parties in a business relationship perceive and interpret value and how their perceptions affect their behaviors have not been at the center of this research. We will argue in this paper that perceptions impact parties' behaviors and the way business relationships develop, and report findings of a longitudinal study of how buyers and suppliers perceive and interpret value of business relationships. We then revisit the concept of value and formulate three propositions regarding the meaning of value in the context of supplier-customer relationships.     

IMP and service-dominant logic: Divergence, convergence and development

This article arose directly from discussions at the 2nd Otago Forum on Service-Dominant (S-D) logic held at the University of Otago in December 2008. It builds on the papers presented and discussions at the forum, on previous papers within the S-D logic field and relates these to the research of the IMP (Industrial Marketing and Purchasing) Group. The article focuses on two important conceptual issues that appear to need further development by both S-D logic and IMP researchers: Firstly, the identity and characteristics of the business actor in an interacted business landscape and second, the nature of value and its creation and delivery. The article also seeks to use some IMP ideas on business interaction in an attempt to refine and clarify the central S-D logic concept of ‘service’ between companies. Finally, the article attempts throughout to draw tentative conclusions about the implications of this conceptual analysis for practitioners.     

The business model in entrepreneurial marketing: A communication perspective on business angels' opportunity interpretation

Entrepreneurial marketing has emerged as a recent perspective within the marketing field, taking the challenges and characteristics of small firms and founding teams into account. Specifically, in the early stages of entrepreneurial marketing, besides potential customers a variety of other stakeholders tend to be in the center of attention. Among these stakeholders, business angels as early-stage investors represent a vital target group. In this paper, we aim to shed light on entrepreneurial marketing in the early phases of new venture creation, in which entrepreneurial firms have an inherent need to market the value of a business opportunity toward potential investors. In particular, we contribute to the literature by introducing the business model as a narrative device for the marketing of early-stage new ventures toward potential business angels. In this regard, the business model is suggested as playing a critical role through making the inherent economic value of a technology explicit. Building on narrative theory, we investigate the role that the business model plays in the decision-making process of 17 business angels. Based on our findings, we propose a model that links the business model to a business angel's interpretation of an investment opportunity and discuss implications for theory and practice.     

Zooming in VS zooming out on value co-creation: Consequences for BtoB research

The concept of value co-creation is now taken for granted in the marketing community. It is the result of what we consider as a premature closure of this concept. The aim of this article is to prevent this premature closure by confronting what this discipline has produced thus far in order to highlight the breadth of situations that this concept presumes to encompass. To achieve this, we analyze a selection of articles published in special issues of marketing journals that were dedicated to value co-creation and/or service dominant logic. This sample enables us to point to the risks of being locked into a zoom-out approach to economic exchange: an arbitrary reduction of the vast heterogeneity of exchange phenomena and an inability to account for the complexity of these phenomena. Because value co-creation is a conception that is in conflict with the zoom-in approach to exchange phenomena, our intent is to conduct a healthy rebalancing of perspectives on economic exchange and thereby keep the controversy alive.     

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.     

Implications of service processes outsourcing on firm value

Outsourcing is one of the important strategies acknowledged by firms recently. With an increase in globalization and the proliferation of information technology, more and more firms outsource not only their production but also their service processes including back office business processes and information technology functions to external suppliers. Recognizing the criticality of outsourcing service processes in marketing management, the authors build on the outsourcing literature and integrate it with the finance literature on market efficiency to develop a conceptual framework. The authors collect outsourcing announcements from the Wall Street Journal and business news available at Lexis-Nexis between 1995 and 2005 to conduct an event analysis. Results indicate that outsourcing in general creates positive firm value, i.e., cumulative abnormal returns; however, such effects vary depending upon different levels and dimensions of an outsourcing decision. The authors conclude with managerial implications and future research at the end.     

Creating value in business relationships: The role of sales

Understanding the creation of value in business relationships has been a long-standing goal of researchers and managers alike. By adopting a relational perspective, recent research on business relationships has made much progress in understanding value-creating processes. As the sales function is thought to be a pivotal part of the value-creating processes in business relationships, the evolving view on creating relationship value clearly has implications for our understanding of the role of sales in these processes. In contrast to its importance, the question of how the sales function contributes to creating value in business relationships has been largely neglected in extant literature. The objective of our paper is to answer this question by systematically linking the relational value creating process to the sales function's content. Interpreting value creation as interaction process, we identify four features of value-creating processes in business relationships suggested in recent research (i.e., jointness, balanced initiative, interacted value, and socio-cognitive construction) and, based on these, outline a framework that is used to define a set of tasks that are key to creating value in business relationships and hence become critical for sales in its hitherto neglected role as co-creator of relationship value. We illustrate the various tasks of this new role of sales with data from 43 interviews with sales managers and salespeople. Along with related normative recommendations in extant literature, the interviews provide support for the validity and relevance of our framework for understanding the role of sales in creating relationship value. This framework puts forward a much-needed first effort towards a theory of sales' role in creating relationship value and offers several opportunities for future research.     

Transitioning and co-evolving to upgrade value offerings: A competence-based marketing view

This article shows how subcontractors in the steel and metalworking industry can effectively upgrade their customer value offerings. The study intends to identify internal and external drivers for successful transitions. It builds on the IMP's (Industrial Marketing and Purchasing Group) research tradition by looking into value creation and competence-based marketing within business networks. Using qualitative methods, the research identifies ‘ideal’ value-added market positions and relates these to specific competence configurations. It also reveals the need to manage co-evolution with other network partners in order to make a successful transition from basic to value-added offerings. The paper contributes to business marketing science by looking explicitly into the mechanisms of internal alignment when upgrading value offerings (a pre-condition often overlooked in extant literature) and by extending the concept of co-evolution.