Social Networks of Researchers in Business To Business Marketing: A Case Study of the IMP Group 1984-1999

Science is a social process that functions through social networks of researchers that form invisible colleges. Analysis of these social networks provides a means for examining the structure of relations among researchers. The Industrial Marketing and Purchasing (IMP) group, "an informal international group of scholars concerned with developing concepts and knowledge in the field of business-to-business marketing and purchasing," is used as a case study of a network of researchers because it has been responsible for considerable research over the last decades in the area of business-to-business marketing, yet its structure remains hidden because of its informal network characteristics. The results of a social network analysis of the IMP group is described based on the pattern of co-authorship at annual IMP conferences. The results reveal a power law distribution of paper co-authorship and a small world network that conforms to the results of studies of other types of social networks. A core network of 57 researchers is identified and its network properties are described, including how it has evolved over time. The study provides the basis for further studies of the social networks of marketing and business researchers.informal networks, business-to-business marketing

New product development in business to business marketing - a relational perspective.

Market position and long-term competitive advantages are dependent on companies’ ability to innovate and their capacity to launch new product or services. This paper aims to highlight the features of product development processes in business to business markets. The research method consisted of a documentary study in the literature and the results focus on the stages involved in the development and launch of a new product. In recent years, statistics have shown an increase in the rate of failure in launching new products on business markets. This has been caused by an inadequate planning and has negative consequences on both customer relationships and organizational economic performance. Given this reality, academics propose a sequential product development plan based on the following essential steps: identifying opportunities and generating ideas, selection of ideas with the highest chances of success, development of new product concept materialized in the form of a prototype, technical testing and acceptance testing, making the final changes to the product, establishing brand name, price level and other intangible elements of the product, legal protection of the product, placing the product into production and effectively lunching the product though a tactical marketing program. Practical experiences show that omission of one or more stages of this process can cause product failure, companies recording a low level of performance, below expected levels.Product development; business to business relationships; planning; ideas selection; marketing tests; product failure.

Business to Business Marketing: Service Recovery and Customer Satisfaction Issues with Ocean Shipping Lines

The tenets of relationship marketing are useful in understanding the success of a service provider. Based on a sample of 221 firms in Singapore that use ocean freight shipping services, examines service recovery issues related to satisfaction. It was found that service recovery methods such as claims handling, problem handling and complaint handling are associated with the level of satisfaction of customers. In addition, interfacing departments also have varying association with levels of satisfaction of customers. Finds that users of these services can identify problems they experience with ocean freight shipping services, and this may impact their choice of most preferred vs. least preferred shipping line. Concludes by giving recommendations on how service firms can mitigate and be vigilant for service recovery problems

Transitioning Business-to-Business Marketing Communications to Social Media

There has been a movement toward digital media marketing channels away from the traditional media marketing channels in the realm of business-to-business (B2B) marketing. This transformation is more than mere semantics. It reflects the recent integration of digital strategies including blogging, social media, and email marketing by B2B marketers. A greater commitment to driving return on investment (ROI) and tracking movement through a website is seen in these strategies. In the rapidly changing digital landscape of B2B marketing, there is a focused emphasis on analytics, which reveals a sharp contrast between traditional media channels and social networking. With traditional media, marketers know very little about the level of success achieved by a campaign because the tools for tracking performance are mostly inferential. With digital media, results can be obtained in real-time, through the big data and plentiful content that is readily available for analysis. The challenge presented by this phenomenon is to make sense of the new paradigm created in B2B marketing by the social media platform. The purpose of this study is to analyze the literature and determine the best strategies that lead to the successful implementation of a B2B marketing program on social media. Evidence-based research was used to analyze how small business owners can successfully transition from traditional media channels to social media channels. They must engage in knowledge acquisition, resource development, strategic planning, and performance measurement. This project will contribute to existing literature from a small business perspective by creating a clear representation of a B2B marketing approach in the Information Age by considering the usage of digital media and the factors that influence the operationalization of networking

Ontology Driven Web Extraction from Semi-structured and Unstructured Data for B2B Market Analysis

The Market Blended Insight project1 has the objective of improving the UK business to business marketing performance using the semantic web technologies. In this project, we are implementing an ontology driven web extraction and translation framework to supplement our backend triple store of UK companies, people and geographical information. It deals with both the semi-structured data and the unstructured text on the web, to annotate and then translate the extracted data according to the backend schema

Mapping the evolutionary stages of asymmetrical supplier-buyer relationships: evidence from the Turkish textile industry

The aim of this paper is to empirically investigate asymmetrical relationship development stages by examining four relationship constructs from small textile suppliers’ perspective and identifying areas for improvement. This study adopted a multiple case study method for investigating the research question. Prior studies into business-to-business marketing have explored asymmetry in dyadic relationships that resulted in limited understanding to our knowledge. The research findings contributed to the understanding of how small suppliers identify critical relationship characteristics that help them to develop symmetries through initial, development and sustainment stages in size asymmetry

Peculiarities of business-to-business marketing strategy creation in ukrainian enterprises

In the article the main distinguishing characteristic of business-to-business (B2B) marketing process are considered. Impact of various factors on the process of marketing strategy creation for enterprises of this segment is reviewed. The possible problems occurring in the strategic planning process at Ukrainian B2B enterprises are outlined and ways of their avoidance are proposed.У статті розглядаються основні відмінні риси процесу маркетингу в сегменті business-to-business (B2B). Аналiзується вплив рiзних чинників на процес розробки маркетингової стратегії для підприємств цього сегмента. Викладені можливi проблеми, що виникають у процесі стратегiчного планування на українських пiдприємствах B2B, i пропонуються можливi шляхи їх попередження

theoretical and empirical evidence from a business-to-business marketing perspective

Recently, integrating Transaction Cost Economic (TCE) and Resource Based View (RBV) arguments has become one of the most prominent theoretical approaches in research on business relationships. We question this dominance and strengthen an exclusive TCE perspective by recalling two of the core TCE constructs in order to achieve full exploitation of TCE reasoning. We discuss the transaction attributes “asset specificity” and “uncertainty” and identify conceptual gaps that lead to ambiguous results regarding the test of TCE guided hypotheses in prior relationship marketing and management research. To overcome these problems, we redefine both concepts and show that they are interconnected in more complex ways than past empirical research has accounted for. Hypotheses are derived and tested empirically in a cross-sectional online-survey setting by using means of structural equation modelling

THE IMPACT OF E-COMMERCE ON THE SUPPLY CHAIN B2B IN IRELAND

The ability to redefine inter-firm relationships and processes, internet-enabled and other Business to Business (B2B) mechanisms facilitate the integration and management of inter- or intra-organisational business processes that produce value for customers. B2B e-commerce in supply chain management (SCM) becomes more important due to its performance implications. Process integration involves upstream and downstream coordination with supply chain partners. In these interactions, supply chain B2B e-commerce helps minimize complexity and increase flexibility while enhancing a higher degree of communication and operational efficiency.Supply chain management; Business to Business marketing; Electronic commerce; Globalization.