Co-creating integrated solutions within business networks: The KAM team as knowledge integrator

This study derives from a need that is both practical and theoretical: the need to increase knowledge of how KAM teams might ensure more successful value co-creation with their business customers in the service sector. The KAM teams in this study are formed of members originating from several supplier companies that integrate and apply resources with their customers in a business network. In the co-creation of integrated solutions within such business networks, KAM teams – drawing on organizational learning theory and knowledge management – are considered as knowledge integrators. The purpose of this study is to analyze the KAM teams' absorptive capacity — that is, how knowledge is acquired, assimilated, and applied in the co-creation of integrated solutions. The study employs a qualitative case study approach, based on 30 in-depth interviews in nine supplier companies operating in advertising, marketing and consulting, and in three key customer companies. The study contributes to the KAM literature by providing new conceptual understanding and empirical insight in respect of networked co-creation of integrated solutions and the influence of the KIBS context on the solutions process.     

Identification as a challenge in key account management: Conceptual foundations and a qualitative study

Managing business relationships requires that boundary-spanning actors, such as key account managers, perform their task at the interface between two relational networks, the internal firm network and the network on the side of the key account. Several streams of research have suggested that similar situations raise questions of identification, but the business-to-business literature has not yet paid much attention to this issue. This study focuses on key account management (KAM) as a typical task of inter-organizational interface management. The conceptual foundations of identification in a sales-related interface context, such as KAM, are first discussed. It then pursues with a qualitative exploratory study that uses data gained through 40 semi-structured interviews with key account managers to identify their identification anchors. The qualitative data suggest four identification foci, namely organizational identification, key account identification, leader identification, and occupational identification, which are illustrated in a conceptual model. The study concludes with a discussion and avenues for future research.     

Firm-internal key account management networks: Framework,case study,avenues for future research

Key account management (KAM) is used for managing relationships between a supplier and its strategically important customer firms, that is, the key accounts. KAM activities typically involve a firm-internal network of actors. While there is a rich body of literature on key account managers' work with external networks in customer firms, this study focusses on the much less explored KAM activities in interaction with the firm-internal network that is required to mobilise resources and develop activities towards key accounts. The purpose of this study is to develop a conceptual framework explaining how the firm's capability to manage the internal KAM network contributes to firm performance. We illustrate our framework using case study material and develop avenues for future research along the elements of our framework.     

Top management involvement with key accounts: The concept,its dimensions,and strategic outcomes

This research proposes a new conceptualization of top management involvement (TMI) in key account management (KAM) – i.e. the breadth and nature of the construct and the specific ways in which senior executives are involved in KAM, which is derived from organization theory and insights from 27 in-depths with KAM practitioners. These dimensions are grouped in two types: direct TMI involvement (through customer contact), and indirect TMI involvement (through decision-making and organizational alignment). The authors then survey 261 key account managers and conduct multiple regression analysis to examine how the dimensions of TMI relate to KAM outcomes. They find that top managers' social interaction with customers is more relevant than business-related interaction, which can even be detrimental when focused on tactical issues. The results also suggest that senior managers should support key account management by aligning the goals and procedures of the different functional areas in the company, and by participating in decision-making of strategic issues.     

Linking key account management practices to performance outcomes

Many suppliers practice relational strategies that aim to achieve competitive advantage through a collaborative business relationship with their customers. Key account management (KAM) is one such relational strategy that suppliers rely upon to manage their relationships with strategically important customers. Yet suppliers still struggle to put such programs into practice effectively, most likely because academic investigation has yet to report on what actions explain the performance of KAM initiatives. Aiming to fill this gap, we first identify a set of key KAM practices at the strategic, organizational, tactical and control levels of management. Next, we examine how these practices explain the performance of KAM through the mediating effect of the supplier's relational capabilities and the relational outputs that such capabilities produce. The results provide support for most of the hypothesized relationships, showing that the identified practices positively affect performance and dyadic outcomes through the mediation coming from the variables examined. From a theoretical perspective, the study adds to our understanding of the factors underlying effective KAM practices. From a managerial perspective, the results provide insights into how suppliers can achieve KAM effectiveness through relationship-oriented activities, skills and outcomes.     

Barriers to the “key supplierization” of the firm

The phenomenon of key supply management (KSM) in business companies is far less investigated than the phenomenon of key account management (KAM) which beneficiates, both in practice and in an academic context, from a growing interest. This article is based on the empirical analysis of a sample of 10 international companies which have recently launched KSM programmes or are currently working on launching such programs. It examines the difficulties these companies come up against when implementing such programmes and proposes to organize these difficulties around three dimensions: 1) the difficulties in implementing real supplier portfolio approaches; 2) the narrow view of value co-creation with suppliers, and 3) the persistent lack of integration of the purchasing function with other internal functions within the company. The conclusion of the article is that KSM is far from being a mere symmetric phenomenon of KAM. Several implications are then discussed in relation to the implementation of KSM programmes within companies.     

The role of personality and motivation on key account manager job performance

Key account management (KAM) has strengthened its relevance as a managerial process in business-to-business (B2B) markets. In many companies, the success of KAM initiatives often rely on individual-level achievement, that is, the performance of key account managers. Despite the relevance of research on individual-level KAM, these topics are largely neglected. This research addresses the problem by developing and testing a structural equation model of personality, motivation, and key account manager job performance. Our results show that two motivational constructs—learning orientation and performance orientation—play major roles in key account manager job performance. In addition, relationships between personality traits and motivational constructs are observed: Extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, and emotional stability are found to have significant relationships to motivational constructs. Two of the personality traits, extraversion and conscientiousness are linked to both learning orientation and performance orientation. We discuss theoretical and managerial implications of our findings and finally provide future research directions.     

The organizational implications of implementing key account management: A case-based examination

Most companies struggle in the effort to become more customer-centric. A typical example of customer-centric change initiative is adoption of a key account management (KAM) program. Companies are increasingly adopting such programs, but knowledge of how to successfully manage the organizational change required to implement them is extremely limited. Our goal in this study was to use case study methodology in order to develop a comprehensive understanding of organizational issues that firms need to consider when implementing a KAM program. We accordingly describe, using as our observational lens a well-established framework (the 7S model), how a multinational company adopted a KAM program in a local branch. We argue, on the basis of our review of the literature on KAM adoption and on change management in sales organizations, that the 7S model can be used to meaningfully synthesize both processes. Using the 7S model, we describe and interpret the change management project the company followed in order to implement the KAM program. Based on this we present some key learnings from the case, accompanied by a conceptual model and a checklist, advanced to help academics and executives better understand how to investigate and manage KAM adoption programs.     

Relational key account management: Building key account management effectiveness through structural reformations and relationship management skills

Literature has widely recognised the importance of key account management (KAM) in building long-term customer relationships. Although KAM grounds significantly on the relationship marketing theory, most empirical studies focus on the financial impact a KAM programme can produce. Hence, only normative work can advise practitioners on the implications from adopting a relational approach in managing their business with customers who can help the supplier realise a broader set of strategic objectives. Drawing from 304 cases of different suppliers, this article seeks to start filling this gap in the literature and offer empirical evidence regarding the structural and relational implications from a KAM programme. In summary, the findings suggest that adopting a relational perspective through the development of key account management orientation (KAMO) will result in certain, necessary, structural reformation while allowing for specific relational skills to develop. Consequently, supplier's performance also improves. Moreover, this chain of effects remains strong independently of resources available to the supplier, suggesting that KAM can be a significant basis for developing a competitive advantage irrespectively of the supplier's size.     

Key network management

Despite the rapid growth of business network research, effective approaches for systematic network management are still in their infancy. This article introduces a systematic approach for managing networks—key network management (KNM). This emerges by expanding the ideas of key account management (KAM) into the network context. A key network refers to a set of actors mobilized by the focal company to realize an opportunity. An opportunity is anything that potentially represents or results in value to the company. A company may manage several key networks. The KNM approach includes three basic elements: (1) identifying a key network, (2) strategies for managing actors of the key network, and (3) developing and applying operational level methods for managing actors within the key network. The KNM approach is not only focused on using networks to fulfill existing needs, but also on discovering new opportunities and establishing and managing networks to realize these opportunities. This article provides a framework for the implementation of KNM approach.     

Government,company, and dyadic factors affecting key account management performance in China: Propositions to provoke research

Key account management (KAM) literature over the past forty years has mostly focused on practices in North America and Europe. China-based KAM research will broaden the scope of analysis to one of the most compelling markets in the world. Our work with hundreds of Chinese KAM personnel representing numerous Western suppliers and Chinese suppliers guides our KAM research propositions for China. We offer propositions regarding conditions where Western suppliers are at a competitive advantage or disadvantage relative to Chinese suppliers. We emphasize the roles of government and of guanxi relationships and how these factors affect suppliers and key account (KA) behaviors including information sharing, demands placed by KAs, and KA retention. We further propose that these relationships are affected by the cultural match/mismatch between suppliers and their KAs.     

Chinese firms’ sustainable development—The role of future orientation,environmental commitment,and employee training

In this research, we study the issues of corporate sustainable development in China. Based on relevant research, we propose a theoretical model showing the relationship among business environmental commitment, cultural value, employee training, and firm performance of sustainable development. It is argued that a cultural value (i.e., organizational future orientation) should be a key antecedent predicting business environmental commitment. On the other hand, a firm’s sustainable performance, such as performance in environmental protection, should be a major consequence of its business environmental commitment. Moreover, the relationship between business environmental commitment and sustainable performance can be moderated positively by the level of employee training. Other conditions being equal, the better the employee training is, the stronger the relationship between business environmental commitment and sustainable development performance. Testing the relevant hypotheses in China, we find evidence supporting our model proposed in this paper. We conclude with a discussion on the implications of our findings for academic researchers and practitioners.     

Attitudes and behaviours of key account managers: Are they really any different to senior sales professionals?

This study investigates the range of attitudes and behaviours exhibited by Key Account Managers (KAMs) in their roles as customer relationship managers. Specifically, we test whether KAMs exhibit different behaviours and attitudes towards relationship management compared to other sales professionals based on a range of assumptions currently theorized but untested in the Key Account Management (KAM) literature. Utilizing the existing theoretical models of a KAM role we identify six major areas of relational behaviour assumed in the literature to separate the KAM from the sales professional. Drawing on a cross sectional quantitative study of 10 organizations and 409 key account managers, sales managers, and senior sales executives we explore goal orientation, planning, customer embeddedness, strategic prioritization, adaptability and internal management behaviours of our groups and find that, in certain managerial tasks, KAMs do indeed exhibit many of the different behaviours and attitudes predicted in the literature. However, in many customer-facing, goal orientated and revenue generating activities, contrary to expectations, they display similar attitudes and behaviours to those in senior sales roles. This challenges the way that the KAM role has previously been conceptualized. Our findings raise a potential issue for senior managers, since KAMs' unexpectedly short term orientation may lead to insufficient consideration of the strategic consequences of their decisions for these key customer relationships.     

Value co-creation practices and capabilities: Sustained purposeful engagement across B2B systems

The paradigm of value co-creation in business markets is now well established in the marketing literature. However, the practices and capabilities for collaborative value co-creation are less understood, particularly in increasingly boundary-less interorganizational, network and ecosystem relationships. This paper describes sets of practices that organizations in business markets adopt to co-create value. We provide a theoretically-grounded, empirically-informed classification of value co-creating practices, identifying the underlying capabilities needed to realize value in B2B systems. We adopt a case study approach utilizing various methods of data collection to explore co-creation practices from four organizations. The analysis reveals that ‘sustained purposeful engagement’ underpins the organizations' ability to co-create and capture value. Implications for organizations willing to develop co-creation capabilities and practices are discussed.     

Implementing key account management: Intraorganizational practices and associated dilemmas

Over the last few decades, key account management (KAM) has become a widespread approach to creating value in strategic customer relationships. Research in KAM has often focused on the role of the key account manager, taking a customer interface perspective and adopting cross sectional methods. We contribute to the KAM body of knowledge by presenting a novel longitudinal study of the intraorganizational decisions and dilemmas faced by leaders when implementing KAM programs. Our findings demonstrate that deploying KAM involves the continual balancing and harmonization of strategic and operational practices. In particular, we show that KAM programs become embedded when firms create structural as well as individual support systems and when long-term aims can be reconciled with the need for short term deliverables.     

Managing strategic system-building networks in emerging business fields: A case study of the Dutch smart grid sector

Companies that wish to launch innovative sustainability technologies can collaborate in strategic networks of actors from industry, government and research institutes to pro-actively build a business ecosystem around their new technology. This is called collective system building. In this paper, we examine how to effectively manage networks for collective system building. Based on a review of the literature, we identify the key factors of effective network management and we propose a conceptual framework for network management at the network level. Subsequently, we conduct a multiple-case study in the Dutch smart grid sector to examine how these key factors are implemented by system-building networks. We find differences with the existing network management literature regarding network composition, network management structure, governance modes, decision-making processes, project management, the free-rider problem and trust-building mechanisms. Our study contributes to a better understanding of effective management of system-building networks, which in turn can lead to greater success in establishing new business fields. We contribute to the literature on strategic business networks, specifically on emerging business networks building new business fields.     

Business relationships in the industrial network literature: Three approaches and their underlying assumptions

The industrial network literature contains underlying assumptions about the nature of business relationships. We use change as a vehicle to unearth these assumptions and conduct a systematic review of change in business relationships in the industrial network literature. We identify three approaches to business relationships: agency, structure and practice. Our research contributes to the industrial network literature by explicating how change in business relationships is derived implicitly from what people do, the surrounding structures, or the logic underlying their action. This research helps provide construct clarity by elaborating the key assumptions and key constructs of the three approaches as well their implications for business relationships research.     

A framework for key account management and revenue management integration

Key Account Management (KAM) and Revenue Management (RevM) have been widely practiced in the service industries for more than three decades, but the effects of RevM on KAM remain largely unknown. This paper addresses this neglected area of study in the marketing field by presenting a framework for KAM and RevM integration that aligns the potentially conflicting management priorities of the two. The study uses an international hotel company as a research context to investigate, first, how a long-term relational approach to KAM may have been affected by RevM short-term revenue maximization goals, and, second, how KAM could be facilitated by RevM through an integrated approach to yield optimization from perishable products and from key accounts. The proposed framework is the first attempt of its kind to amalgamate KAM and RevM, involving critical analysis to assess comprehensively the revenue and the relationship value of a key account.     

Leveraging stakeholder networks with outside-in marketing

The theory of Outside-in marketing (OIM) emphasizes the importance of internal and external partners of a firm to drive strategies for value creation. OIM is based on four key tenets: market sensing and responses, segmentation and targeting, innovation, and employee's learning effort. With this commentary, we apply the theory of OIM to network analysis. By doing so, we identify key stakeholder networks as part of a firm's business ecosystem and discuss the value that can be extracted from different stakeholder networks. Most prior network research in marketing has mainly used customer or employee network data while neglecting other important stakeholder groups. We provide information about how network analysis of stakeholder data can fill gaps in the marketing literature and provide firms with essential knowledge, economic value, and influence over external partners, and improve the value generation process. We first describe each tenet and give examples of stakeholder networks that can be investigated within the realm of the tenet definitions. We then discuss different challenges that social network research can pose, and end with future research questions that can be explored for empirical research studies.