Editorial: The B2B opportunity

Starting the Journal of Business and Industrial Marketing was a pioneering enterprise for the former editor Wesley J. Johnston and especially his predecessor Peter LaPlaca (see JBIM historical background in LaPlaca and Johnston, 2006). At the time JBIM was born, laymen associated marketing with consumer communication if not manipulation. Journal submissions could contribute by highlighting the relevance of B2B, explore the complexity of business buying decisions and more generally lighten-up what is going on in the backstage of consumer markets. How things have changed! Every other crisis re-affirms the role of connected value chains, when a shortage of low-cost chips disrupts deliveries of cars and even stimulates a shift of manufacturers toward premium strategies. Ubiquitous computing (Weiser, 1991) has not only opened-up novel channels toward consumers – it also shapes the awareness of people for the connectedness of our world, the role of ecosystems in society and business and its implications for complexity (Ehret, 2025).

As we are leading the editorship of this journal (since January, 2025), we do not need to explain the relevance of business-to-business marketing, not to academic scholars, even less so for decision makers but neither to laymen (see Lilien, 2016 and Mora Cortez and Johnston, 2017 for more details on the B2B gap). You could expect that the status of business-to-business-marketing research is growing along with the significance of business markets. It has-less so in terms of status of business-to-business marketing research. The connectedness of business is prevalent across many disciplines in management and business research: Innovation ecosystems (Adner and Kapoor, 2010), open business models (Chesbrough, 2010), inter-connected value chains and systems (MacDonald et al., 2016; Møller et al., 2020) or value cocreation (Payne et al., 2008; Spohrer et al., 2022; Vargo and Lusch, 2004),– all these concepts witness how progress of business research has been advancing by acknowledging the connectedness of businesses. At the same time, they also witness how B2B marketing scholars have missed opportunities to raise the status of B2B marketing from a field of research towards a discipline shaped by a commons set of assumptions, accepted theories and methods and related standards. As Sheth et al. (2025) noted, the service research community is an example how a committed school of scholars succeeds to raise the status of its discipline by focusing on a common set of research problems, building on a group of agreed assumptions, theories, concepts and methods (Ehret, 2025). Services, innovation and strategic management have raised their status in the context of connected markets. In comparison, B2B research has remained relatively fragmented.

Our experience in the first year as editors of JBIM clearly reflects this notion. We are both surprised and delighted by the number and general quality of submissions. But both comes with dark sides: The common experience of editors across all disciplines is that AI facilitates the fabrication of academic content without necessarily raising its quality (Albarico, 2024; Mathur and Chakrabarti, 2026; Moffatt and Hall, 2025). The additional challenge in B2B marketing is that almost any business-topic reflects the connected-ness of businesses, but these have multiple social, psychological or technological aspects that are not direct relevant marketing issues. Not least, even where articles show promise in terms of concepts, empirical evidence and progress in management approaches, they frequently come in disconnected manner from the B2B research community.

Our highest priority as editors of JBIM is to advance the progress of the B2B research community. Our commitment builds on four pillars: (1) Business-to-Business interaction is a key characteristic of any marketing activity, not a peculiar phenomenon (Alderson, 1958; Ehret, 2025). Marketing became a profession once manufacturers were disconnected from consumers. It comes with no surprise, that channel-research is the domain of marketing-research that has probably the strongest inroad into mainstream marketing research. But there are even more prevalent aspects: As a profession, marketing has always been an inter-organizational enterprise, where communication agencies, publication services, consultancies, research agencies and technical support services constitute the resources and infrastructure for marketing operations (Ehret, 2025). (2) Business-to-Business Markets are the engine of economic development. The recent decades have been forcing decision makers and researchers to re-consider their views on economic progress and innovation. Historically, economic research tended to assume a trickle-down-effect of innovation from research labs in rich countries that diffuses subsequently into society and then emerging economies. Now, this picture is completed if not reversed with the notion of reverse and leapfrogging innovation where emerging economies are pioneers in the adoption if not the invention of innovations like digital money, autonomous cars, drones or medical instruments (Brezis et al., 1993; Burlamaqui and Kattel, 2016; Ehret and Olanyian, 2023). All these phenomena call for our attention toward the role of Business-to-Business Markets for shaping the world for a better future, and simulate economic development, social progress and quality of life. (3) While the complexity of phenomena calls for a degree of openness, B2B researchers can only advance if they aim for some common levels of generalization. Reflecting the B2B phenomenon, most relevant and promising theories and concepts will show commitment to the connectedness of B2B markets, as do for example relationship (e.g. Grønroos and Helle, 2022; MacDonald et al., 2016; Ulaga and Eggert, 2006), or ecosystem approaches (e.g. Kowalkowski et al., 2024; Møller et al., 2020; Pattinson et al., 2023). At the same time, still, besides a level of openness we also urge scholars to demonstrate how they advance a common understanding. On that ground, we call for conceptual dialogue and encourage scholars from various camps to talk to each other. As editors, we show a strong commitment to manuscripts which make a clear contribution to advance a common understanding of B2B Marketing. (4) The methodological domain is a continuous challenge for B2B marketing researchers (e.g. see Cabanelas et al., 2025). As many B2B markets are shaped by small-numbers situations, the mainstream arsenal of marketing research instruments runs on empty. At the same time, B2B research has provided the backbone of methodological advancements, such as network analytics, social capital studies or case study research. Ubiquitous computing opens pathways for novel research approaches which use the rich set of unused behavioral data, increasing the power of simulation models and the capabilities to conduct experiments. We encourage scholars to embrace these and virtually any methodology that shows promise in advancing our field.

Besides these editorial aims for research progress, one of our main purposes is to contribute to the growth of the B2B research community. We aim to encourage debate and exchange, and at the same maintain a focus on the B2B domain. On those grounds we are an open-tent platform and welcome scholars from a broad range of theoretical backgrounds, methodological capabilities and preferred research topics, with a clear commitment to the B2B dimension. To continue to do so, we are welcoming applications for being Associate Editor in JBIM, especially in the areas of technology, AI, longitudinal data analysis and analytical approaches to paper development. Any interested party should contact us via e-mail.

We also seek collaboration along healthy – sportsman-like- competition with our related B2B and general marketing journal. Our general sense is that our profession will thrive if journal editors in the different B2B-focused journals work together (i.e. Journal of Business and Industrial Marketing, Industrial Marketing Management, Journal of Business-to-Business Marketing). To be able to be representative in the marketing sphere, we all need to help in the constructing a favorable positioning for the B2B niche. A new, collaborative ecosystemic purview is deemed essential for knowledge enhancement in any science.