Guest editorial
Judy ZolkiewskiManchester Business School, University of Manchester, Manchester, UK, andPeter TurnbullBirmingham Business School, University of Birmingham, Birmingham, UK
Some 30 years ago, in the area that was then referred to as industrial marketing, scholars were beginning to challenge the then conventional thinking about industrial marketing dynamics (Cunningham and Roberts, 1974; Håkansson and Wootz, 1975; Håkansson et al., 1977). The work of authors such as Robinson et al. (1967), Webster and Wind (1972) and Sheth (1973) on industrial buyer behaviour had provided important insights into issues such as the decision-making unit (DMU), the buying process and perceived risk. However, the “new thinking” was that industrial buying and marketing was not a transactional process whereby the seller made an “offer” to a potential or existing customer company. Neither was it confined to a purchaser specifying its needs for a supplier to meet them. The reality was that buying and selling was a dynamic process taking place over time through a process of interaction between two parties.
By 1980, emerging theories based on substantial empirical research carried out by a fledgling international collaborative research group – which became known as the International Marketing and Purchasing (IMP) Group –were being published (e.g. Ford, 1980; Turnbull and Cunningham, 1981). In 1982, the IMP Group published their conceptualisation of their investigation into several hundred marketing/purchasing organisational relationships. It is enshrined in the interaction model (Håkansson, 1982). Academics and practitioners have recognised this as a major contribution to conceptual thinking and development. Interestingly, over the subsequent 25 years, the concepts of relationships and interaction have been adopted and strongly developed in services and consumer markets (e.g. Berry, 1985; Sheth and Parvatiyar, 1995; Grönroos, 2000; Vargo and Lusch, 2004). The pioneering work of the IMP Group has stimulated an enormous amount of empirical research and conceptual development in both industrial and international markets and the development of network theories (Axelsson and Easton, 1992; Håkansson and Snehota, 1995) have been an important step in the better understanding of international business-to-business markets. These network theories have portrayed relationships between organisations as being embedded in a complex network of interacting parties.
In the first decade of the twenty-first century we can now look back and reflect on how perceptions of and research into industrial markets (or should we call them B2B markets?) have changed and developed. In this special issue of the European Journal of Marketing, we attempt, through out selection of papers, to critically review the latest developments in business-to-business and international research and their contribution to knowledge.
We believe that this special issue reflects the latest thinking in the field and the trends that are emerging. What is interesting is that we have noticed,in a number of the papers that we have reviewed and included for publication, a“reflection” of many scholars – that they are returning to a belief, perhaps forgotten or even unconsciously omitted in recent work –that fundamentally the basis of business is the relationships a company has with individual buying and selling “parties”. Of course, individual dyadic relationships have to be understood within their wider set – or network– of relationships. But the essential building block of successful buying and selling is the dyad – especially with important relationships; however“important” is defined – in terms of monetary value, strategic development, technological co-operations, etc. Thus, understanding and managing dyadic relations, within the context of multiple portfolios/networks of relationships and countries remains the fundamental challenge of marketers and buyers.
Our first paper is an invited commentary by David Ford and Håkan Håkansson. They provide an insight into the history of the International/Industrial Marketing and Purchasing (IMP) Group. This is a insightful and critical analysis of 25 years of published research in Industrial/B2B marketing by scholars who have been broadly ascribed to the “IMP” school of thinking. They note that:
the “IMP research” has been an important influence on the way that researchers and practitioners think and behave;
the original challenges identified are still relevant some 25 years later;and
some aspects of those early conceptualisations need further critical analysis and development.
The authors, who both played key roles in the development of theory and methodology, provide important and well-argued analyses of key issues such as the debate about whether or not buyer-seller relationships management should be considered as a managerial technique. They argue robustly that if marketing consists of interaction of two or more parties (actors) then relationship marketing is a fallacy. This is a contentious and important challenge to many other researchers and particularly the advocates of CRM.
What few of us would contend is their reiteration of the importance of relationships and their interactive nature and, therefore, ipso facto,that marketing/purchasing managers cannot “manage” dyadic relationships independently of their other relationships.
The second challenge to conventional thinking that Ford and Håkansson present relates to processes underlying relationships – the processes of interaction. Whilst the importance of relationships is recognised in current marketing literature, there is little extant discussion of the processes that initiate, develop, maintain and eventually end relationships. Why is this?Because, it is argued, firstly that it is much easier to observe and analyse a relationship than the processes of interaction; secondly, interaction challenges, even contradicts, conventional theories of marketing management.
The literature on interaction, as a bilateral or multilateral set of processes fundamentally refutes the view/approach that focuses primarily upon the single company (or actor) and thereby marketing as an issue within the domain of “the company”. Ford and Håkansson strongly develop this paradox by comparing the traditional view of “the world of market and action” with the IMP view of “the world of network and interaction”. This discussion is absolutely central to understanding the real differences between “conventional” marketing thought and the conceptual contribution of IMP theories on interaction, relationships and networks, which underlies this special issue.
The second paper is another contribution from two IMP founders and long-term contributors to the evolution of our thinking and understanding –Lars-Gunnar Mattson and Jan Johanson. Their focus is also historical insofar as it analyses the evolution and uniqueness of Swedish work on industrial and international marketing that, when combined with the work from the other IMP researchers in France, Germany, Italy and the UK, led to the emergence of the network perspective. The authors trace the development of new concepts and argue that this was a lengthy evolutionary and, primarily, social process. Three interdependent areas of research, they argue, were critical to the development of today’s network perspective, i.e. supplier-customer relationships, the strategy and organisation of the firm and the inter-connective nature of market relationships.
They also bring to our attention the dynamics of the network by recognising the coexistence of stability and change and the difficulties in defining the boundaries of a firm. Additionally, in line with the paper by Ford and Håkansson,they highlight the challenge presented when trying to apply economic theory in a real market context.
The paper is, not surprisingly, cohesive with the framework of thinking propounded in the Ford and Håkansson contribution. It also stresses the international aspects of the research by describing how the work in industrial markets also led to exploration of psychic distance and the internationalisation process. This leads us to suggest that categorising research into “neat”pockets such as business-to-business or international is not always practical or even expeditious.
The paper by Eiriz and Wilson is a thoughtful reflection on the development of theory in relationship marketing, linking the work in industrial/business-to-business marketing and consumer marketing. Although the authors do not give much attention to the interaction processes, they provide a useful review of the various streams of management research (including economics, political science and law) that they believe are the key theoretical foundations of relationship marketing. They integrate this rather neatly with the extant work in consumer services and business-to-business relationship marketing to postulate a clear model or perspective of what they believe the priorities are for future research in relationship marketing. These priorities are rationale for relationships, relationship structures and relationship processes … an explicit recognition that interaction is indeed the key element of the relationship marketing paradigm. It is also interesting to note that they, like Ford and Håkansson, focus on structure and process of relationships as areas where the field should be developed.
The paper by Ritter and Walter addresses the issue of how IT competencies and usage impact upon dyadic relationships. The authors consider the tensions between IT and relationship management. Reporting the results of empirical research into a sample of more than 100 German supplier-buyer relationships, the authors conclude that although both IT and relationship management can be important influences on relationships; IT cannot substitute for effective relationship management. However, relationship managers need to be competent in both management and ICT.
Whilst this finding is in itself important, the authors also conclude that relationships can be over-managed, i.e. there is a curvilinear/effect of IT on relationship functions. This has important managerial implications and needs careful consideration by both academics and managers.
Ulaga and Eggert consider the issue of relationship value as a performance-based construct linked to key elements of relationship quality– commitment, satisfaction and trust. The authors report the results of an empirical study of purchasing managers in the USA and suggest that relationship value is an antecedent to relationship quality and this, in turn, is positively related to customer satisfaction and thereby a customer’s intention to further develop its business with a given supplier. They also find that relationship dissolution is closely related to relationship quality. A particularly interesting, and unexpected, conclusion is that trust does not appear to be “a requirement” for relationship development but does seem to mediate the link between satisfaction and commitment. Again, these findings should stimulate discussion in both the business and academic worlds.
Lindfelt and Törnroos also discuss value creation, but from a very different standpoint. Their paper addresses an area that, to-date, has received little attention: how value creation in business networks can be understood in an ethical context.
Their comparison of the stakeholder and international network theory approaches to value creation and ethics is insightful and provides a sound basis for the development of their conceptual framework of ethical network embeddedness. The elements of ethical embeddedness: ethical network identity,ethical role, ethical position and ethical atmosphere provide a sound basis for further empirical and theoretical development. They lead us to ask if we should also consider the role of ethical learning in networks? The dynamics arising from ethical influences are clearly important within the network and could be seen as being strategic imperatives.
Blois and Ivens challenge conventional thinking about how relational norms are measured. Their challenge to the appropriateness of the scales developed by Kaufmann and Stern (1988) is thought provoking in its own right. The simplicity of the experiment they use to test their assertions is also appealing and should encourage business-to-business researchers to consider such a methodology more frequently than they do at present. However, the most important aspect of this paper is the point that the authors make with respect to the dangers of not tracing back ideas to their original source and relying on“quotes of quotes”. We see more and more papers that neglect original sources and which can easily muddy the research field and develop research mythology rather than fact – the examples cited by Blois and Ivens clearly illustrate this in the context of relational norms. Another example that springs to mind is the ubiquitous use and acceptance of Hofstede’s (1980) cultural dimensions in contexts totally outside their original use(see the criticisms presented in the paper by Fletcher and Fang).
Helm, Rolfes and Günter provide an insight into the willingness of German suppliers to end unprofitable relationships. While they recognise that their work is still exploratory, they highlight the lack of awareness in industry about customer profitability and especially customer lifetime value. Their findings identify three tentative groups of customers, the “hardliners”who are willing to end unprofitable relationships, while “appeasers”and “undecided” seem much more reluctant to do so. This paper certainly has important implications for practising managers and sets the baseline for much future research. Another interesting facet of this paper is how it illustrates the fuzzy boundaries of business-to-business research: the authors do not simply draw on extant “business-to-business” theory but look into other areas, particularly that of services marketing, to find constructs and ideas that will enhance their research. Whilst not wishing to enter the debate about whether or not there should be a different logic to marketing research (cf. Vargo and Lusch, 2004), we would urge all researchers to continue to be innovative in their search for supporting material.
The papers by Prenkert and Hallén, and also by Henneberg, Mouzas and Naudé present two very different pictures of business networks. Prenkert and Hallén demonstrate how revisiting the foundations of marketing theory in the context of more recent developments can lead to enrichment and development of theory. They present a refined version of Alderson’s (1958) exchange theory which incorporates thinking about interaction and causes us to consider more carefully the direction and layers of exchange processes. Their meticulous analysis should also provide a very useful tool for researchers wanting to further develop this method of network analysis. Henneberg et al., on the other hand, look at what managers perceive as their network. Their results show that different managers perceive networks very differently. The maps produced by the various managers give insight into how managers interact with their perceived network and how their perceptions relate to extant theory. Perhaps this work gives us a clue as to why network management cannot be simply academically prescribed – because of the heterogeneity and subjectivity of actors’ perceptions and the heterogeneity of the networks themselves.
The final paper, by Fletcher and Fang, returns to one of the core themes of business-to-business marketing: that of its international context. Their paper focuses on relationship and network development in an Asian context. They challenge the dominant approach to understanding Asian markets, that of analysis based on Hofstede’s (1980) cultural dimensions. In contrast, the authors favour an approach that looks at cultural groups and traits that are specific to Asian markets. The idea that Chinese strategists will quite happily employ win-win and win-lose strategies at the same time– provides a real challenge to western ways of thinking. Fletcher and Fang’s development of an alternative approach to understanding Asian culture should provide a fruitful research ground for academics. It should also result in interesting implications for managers, all of whom will be faced by increasing competition from Asia in the coming years.
We believe that these papers provide an insight into the breadth of research in business-to-business marketing today. They show that relationships and networks cannot always be simply deconstructed and remind us that it is necessary to understand complexity and dynamics. They illustrate new and emerging streams of literature and show the richness of thinking in the field. They stress the importance of understanding interaction and relationships in the context of the dyad as the basis for understanding the portfolio and the dyad. They remind us of the international dimension to business-to-business marketing and move us to call for more international, multicultural research in the area. We would suggest that this is imperative, given the shifts in the global market towards the emerging Asian economies of India and China. They also stress the need to go back to original sources and not to be content with somebody else’s interpretation of critical issues. With this is mind, we would suggest that there may be merit in incorporating the basics of organisational buying behaviour, perceived risk and organisational learning into the context of this wider understanding of business-to-business markets and developments in IT alongside ever increasing globalisation.
Finally, and perhaps most importantly, they remind us that it is naïve to accept the status quo – we must continue to challenge existing theories and practices in order to be able to understand the dynamics of the rapidly evolving world in which we live.
Acknowledgements
The authors would like to thank all the authors and reviewers for making this special edition possible. Special thanks go to Malcolm Cunningham, whose ongoing support means so much.
About the Guest Editors
Judy Zolkiewski is a senior lecturer in marketing at Manchester Business School, the University of Manchester, UK. Her research interests are business-to-business markets, relationships and networks; business-to-business services; and, the management of customer relationships and portfolios.
Peter Turnbull is a Professor of Marketing at Birmingham Business School, the University of Birmingham, UK. He was one of the founder members of the IMP group. His areas of expertise include international marketing and purchasing,the management of customer relationships and portfolios and health care management and marketing. He is a member of a number of professional bodies, has had positions as the editor and associate editor of journals and is on a number of editorial boards.
List of reviewers
Luis AraujoPeter BattRoss BrennanBernard CovaAndrew CoxMalcolm CunninghamBill DonaldsonLars-Erik GaddeHans Georg GemuendenAino Halinen-KailaLaurids HedaaSusanne HertzGillian HopkinsonBarbara LewisDamien McLoughlinPaul MichellKristian MöllerCatherine PardoRobert SalleRobert SpekmanRobert SpencerLouise YoungIan WilkinsonDavid Wilson
