Global Account Management: A Literature Based Conceptual Model Available to Purchase

Global Account Management (GAM) is not a recent phenomenon. Xerox first appointed global account managers in 1988 and Citicorp has a history of using GAM processes that go back over twenty‐five years. What is new is that GAM has emerged as one of the major strategic issues facing multinational companies operating markets that are thinking globally. As a consequence GAM has stimulated growing interest among academics and a flurry of experiential articles in practitioner journals and “How we did it” presentations at conferences. Over the past few years a number of major research initiatives have produced papers that attempted to build upon the rather fragmented outputs addressing GAM related issues that began to emerge during the middle of the 1990s. Three of the recent studies of particular interest are: The SRT/SAMA Global Account Management Study; The GAM Contingency Model; and The St.Gallen GAM Study. Even though each has provided valuable insights into the GAM process the new conceptual model provided in this paper is the first attempt to integrate all of the individual findings. A number of propositions are offered in an attempt to stimulate research in the area.