ISBM Research
Q U A RT E R LY
Winter 2010
Volume 3, Issue 1
IN THIS ISSUE . . .
In This Issue . . .
In This Issue ............................................ 1
Harvard to Host 2010 ISBM B-to-B Academic
Conference ..........................................2
B-to-B Ph.D. Student Research
Camp 2010 .......................................3
The International Journal of Research in Marketing (IJRM) Information from Editor,
Marnik G. Dekimpe ..............................4
From the Membership:
ISBM Trends 2012 Study: Value, Needs,
Growth................................................5
2009 ISBM Dissertation Award Winners
Announced .........................................6
IPSS Update: (ISBM Ph.D. Seminar
Series) . ..............................................6
Other Announcements ................................6
CONTACT INFORMATION
Research Director
Gary L. Lilien, ([email protected])
Associate Research Director
Rajdeep Grewal, ([email protected])
Executive Director
Ralph Oliva, ([email protected])
Institute for the Study of Business Markets
Smeal College of Business
The Pennsylvania State University
484 Business Building
University Park, PA 16802
USA
+1-814-863-2782 • WWW.ISBM.ORG
W
elcome to the first issue of the 2010
ISBM academic newsletter. Our feature
this issue is Ralph Oliva’s “From the
Membership Column.” Ralph reports on the top
line results of the biennial ISBM Trends Study.
That study is designed to poll thought leaders in
academia and industry about the issues and topics
Raj Grewal
Gary L. Lilien
that are likely to be of most concern to BtoB
marketers in the next several years. Ralph provides focus on several topic areas that are
most in need of attention; academics concerned with research on relevant topics should
take careful note.
Our close colleague, Marnik Dekimpe has just taken over the editorship of the excellent
International Journal for Research in Marketing. His column discusses why IJRM
should be the place to go with your best BtoB academic research. We would like
to thank Marnik for that invitation and we urge our readers to give IJRM their top
consideration.
We are pleased to congratulate the three winners of the 2009 ISBM dissertation support
award competition Ranjan Banerjee, The University of Minnesota, Mahima Hada,
The Pennsylvania State University, and William Zahn, The University of Houston.
Congratulations to all!
As we go to press, two ISBM PhD Seminar Series (IPSS) courses have just kicked
off—Channel Management, taught by Mark Bergen and George John and Innovation
Management taught by Gerry Tellis. Raj Grewal provides more detail inside.
Two important ISBM events are coming up this summer: our biennial PhD camp, with
Abbie Griffin serving as Camp Counselor (again—thanks Abbie!) and our biennial
Academic Conference (run by Das Narayandas and the two of us). Both events will
take place at the Harvard Business School in August just prior to the summer AMA
Marketing Educators’ conference. See inside for camp application details and calls for
papers and special sessions. We hope to see all (or at least most) of you in Boston in
August.
All the best!
Gary L. Lilien
Research Director
Institute for the Study
of Business Markets
Raj Grewal
Associate Research Director
Institute for the Study
of Business Markets
PAGE 2
Harvard to Host 2010 ISBM B-to-B
Academic Conference, August 11-12th
M
ark your calendars! We are pleased to announce that the Harvard Business School will be hosting the 2010 ISBM BtoB
Academic Conference, scheduled to begin at noon on 11 August 2010 and continue through the end of the day on 12 August.
That time is just prior to the AMA Summer Educator’s Conference which will be held in Boston beginning on 13 August. Raj
Grewal and Gary Lilien from the ISBM and Das Narayandas from the Harvard Business School will be acting as conference co-chairs.
Some features of the conference:
1.
Overlap with the 2010 BtoB PhD Camp. Elsewhere in this issue, please see the announcement of the 2010 ISBM BtoB PhD
Camp—which will be held on 11 August, also at the Harvard Business School. The half day overlap means that we will be
mixing with PhD students at least during the early part of the conference and that many of the PhD students will stay around for
the Academic Conference as well.
2.
Senior BtoB Marketing Executive Plenary. Das Narayandas will organize and chair a Plenary session with 3-4 Senior BtoB
Marketing Executives who will identify key issues that they face in their practice and what those issues mean for business
marketing academics.
3.
Invited plus competitive paper sessions. We are in the process of reviewing all the great paper abstracts that have been
submitted. Accepted authors will be notified later this month as we will build the preliminary conference agenda. Please direct
any questions on your submission to our conference administrator, Lori Nicolini ([email protected]).
Complete conference details, along with registration information, fees, conference agenda, and travel information will be updated to
our conference website (http://aca10.isbm.org) as it becomes available. To receive the “early bird” rate of $395 USD, submit your
registration form before 16 June 2010. We are suggesting participants stay at the Inn at Harvard and have negotiated a nightly rate
of $185 USD. To guarantee this rate, please mention you are with the ISBM Academic Conference when making your reservations
in order to receive this group rate. In the meantime, if you have any questions or suggestions for the conference, please feel free to
contact any one of us.
We hope to see you there!
Raj Grewal, [email protected]
Gary L. Lilien, [email protected]
Das Narayandas, [email protected]
Das Narayandas
Harvard Business School
© 2006 http://philip.greenspun.com/copyright
PAGE 3
Ph.D. Student Camp for Research in B-to-B Markets to
be held August 2010
R
eminder! The next Ph.D. Student Camp for Research in
Business-to-Business Markets will be held in Boston, MA
at the Harvard Business School on Wednesday, 11 August,
just prior American Marketing Association’s Summer Educator
Conference. Students are encouraged to attend the ISBM
Business-to-Business Markets Academic Conference that begins
on the afternoon of 11 August and continues through 12 August,
which also will also be held at Harvard Business School.
The camp is designed for students who have completed at least
one year of doctoral work and have interest in or are thinking of
pursuing work in BtoB marketing and management. There are
no geographic or field restrictions; we anticipate that students
studying in fields including marketing, strategy, management,
R&D management, information systems, and business logistics/
supply chain management will find the Camp attractive and
beneficial.
The purpose of this event is to enable students to interact with
prominent faculty members and young, promising scholars, get
acquainted with research paradigms and topics in business-tobusiness strategy, marketing, and management, understand how
to develop and publish quality business research articles in top
academic journals and give students opportunities to have their
research ideas and projects constructively critiqued.
The camp is jointly sponsored by the Institute for the Study of
Business Markets (ISBM) at Penn State and Harvard Business
School.
There is a small registration fee for students to attend ($75 USD
camp only; $175 USD camp and academic conference) which
includes breakfast and lunch. Attendees and their schools will
be responsible for travel and lodging costs. We have negotiated a
nightly rate of $185 USD at the Inn at Harvard. This rate will be
extended for the dates 8-16 August 2010 in case you are staying
on for the AMA Educators’ conferenence. In order to receive this
rate, please mention the group ISBM Academic Conference when
you reserve your room.
The deadline to submit an application for the camp is 1 April
2010. Look for complete registrations details and nomination
process on the ISBM website http://phdcamp10.isbm.org.
We are in the process of building our camp sessions and recruiting
our camp counselors. Current faculty counselors include: Ajay
Kohli (Editor, Journal of Marketing), Sandy Jap (Emory),
Wes Johnston (Georgia State U.), Srinath Gopalakrishna (U.
Missouri), Das Narayandas (HBS), Jim Narus (Wake Forest), Rob
Palmatier (U. Washington), Lisa Scheer (U. Missouri), Robert
Spekman (U. Virginia), Robert Thomas (Georgetown), Raj
Grewal (Penn State), Gary Lilien (Penn State), and Abbie Griffin
(U. Utah).
If you have any additional questions, please contact Abbie Griffin
at abbie.griffi[email protected]. We hope students and faculty
from all over the globe will attend this
event.
Abbie Griffin
Camp Director
University of Utah
abbie.griffi[email protected]
Faculty and Ph.D. Students, 2007 Ph.D. Camp at Georgetown
Abbie Griffin
PAGE 4
The International Journal of Research in Marketing
(IJRM) Information from Editor, Marnik G. Dekimpe
F
Marnik G. Dekimpe
irst, I would like to thanks
the ISBM, and Gary Lilien in
particular, for this opportunity
to make you more familiar with the
International Journal of Research
in Marketing (IJRM). IJRM is a
broad journal that is open to a wide
array of substantive topics, research
paradigms, and methodologies,
provided the research is
innovative and demonstrates high
methodological and/or conceptual
rigor
IJRM has a keen interest in
contributions from the businessto-business domain, and would
like to continue being one of the
premier outlets for research in that
ISSN: 0167-8116
Imprint: ELSEVIER
area. This interest is reflected in
the composition of the editorial
board. Several of IJRM’s Associate Editors, including
Sandy Jap, Aric Rindfleisch, Christophe Van den Bulte,
Peter Verhoef and Stefan Wuyts, have a clear businessmarketing profile, as do many of our editorial board
members. For example, both ISBM’s Reseach Director
(Gary Lilien) and Associate Research Director (Raj
Grewal) are very active members of the review board.
Recent B2B studies published in IJRM include “Partner
selection in B2B information service markets” by Wuyts,
Verhoef & Prins (2009), “The profit implications of
altruistic versus egoistic orientations for business-tobusiness exchanges” by Hill and Watkins (2009) and
“Survival of high tech firms: the effects of diversity of
product-market portfolios, patents, and trademarks” by
Srinivasan, Lilien, and Rangaswamy(2009), to name just
a few.
Apart from this general interest in the substantive domain,
I also want to emphasize that IJRM is open to and
supportive of survey research provided that this research
approach fits the substantive problem at hand, and that
state-of-the-art survey techniques are used (see e.g., the
excellent discussion of A. Rindfleisch in the Winter 2008
issue of the ISBM Research Quarterly).
Let me finish by presenting five reasons why you should
select IJRM for your best B2B work:
•
As already indicated, IJRM has an intrinsic interest
in B2B applications, and both the reviewers and
Associate Editors who will be assigned to your
papers share this interest. Moreover, we have a clear
policy of providing constructive comments aimed at
improving the submitted work.
•
IJRM is among the premier academic journals in the
marketing field, with an impact factor of 1.61, and
a 5-year impact factor of 2.62. An inspection of the
last volumes shows an impressive list of papers from
highly-cited authors in the field, from prior editors,
and from scholars who have awards named after
them. Your papers will thus be in good company.
•
The review process is among the smoothest in the
field. Even though each paper is reviewed by two
reviewers and an expert associate editor, we manage
to keep the turnaround time to less than two months
(55 days in 2008). Moreover, we work hard to
avoid multiple revision rounds. If the paper makes it
through the first round, a clear commitment is made
to publish the paper if the conditions outlined in the
decision letter are met in the revision.
•
Once accepted, the time to seeing your article in print
is limited. We do not have a lengthy back-log and
typically publish papers within 6 months following
the final acceptance. As such, the paper comes to
print sooner, and can start to accumulate citations
more quickly.
•
Finally, we actively look for articles that have clear
managerial implications, and we push the authors on
that dimension so as to obtain as large an impact in
the business community as possible.
For further information on the journal, please do not
hesitate to contact me at [email protected], or visit the
journal’s web page at http://ijrm.feb.uvt.nl.
I look forward to receiving your manuscripts.
Marnik G. Dekimpe
Research Professor of Marketing, Tilburg University
Editor, IJRM
[email protected]
PAGE 5
“From the Membership” ISBM Trends 2012 Study:
Value, Needs, Growth”
A
s we went into
the fourth
quarter of 2009,
we were fielding the
current track of our
ISBM “Trends Study”
which can provide
important direction
for our practitioners
in Member firms and
researchers alike. We
Ralph Oliva
conduct the ISBM
trends study every two years, and the
current track looks out from 2010 to
2012. This study was originally triggered
by a request from Connie Cavanaugh at
Hewlett-Packard back in 1997. Since then
we’ve continued to do the study every two
years, with the seventh track coming out
of the field in December 2009.
As we conduct the study we reach out to
ISBM virtual faculty around the world, as
well as to a broad base of ISBM member
practitioners, with three key questions
looking out over the next 2-3 years:
•
What are the critical challenges
business marketers will face?
•
What are the key capabilities we must
build? And...
•
In the areas identified, please cite
benchmark examples and suggest
tools we might deploy to improve in
those areas.
The study follows a two-round research
process. In a first qualitative anecdotal
stage, we simply ask these three questions
to a selected group of thought leaders
from academia and practice. This year 39
respondents provided us with quite a bit of
anecdotal data and narrative on the three
issues.
Working from the anecdotal data we
identified 22 “challenge/capability clusters”
and formulated these into a questionnaire
we deployed to a broader audience of
practitioners and academic researchers.
We gathered 344 respondents who rated
the importance of each item on a one to
seven scale.
The Top Three:
Value Communication, Indentification
or Real Need, Find Growth
Opportunities
The key challenges business marketers will
face and capabilities we need to build as
identified in the survey are:
1.
Business Marketers must develop,
learn and utilize new tools and
approaches to more effectively
quantify and communicate the value
we create for our customers.
2.
We need to work to develop systemic
methods to better understand what
customers really need -- beyond what
they can say or articulate.
3.
We need to be in the lead in finding,
sensing, identifying and assessing new
opportunities for organic growth.
This set of items was rated at the top by
all audiences. Theses three “trends” clearly
dominate in importance - in this order.
For many researchers and practitioners
these might qualify as “perennial favorites.”
What was particularly telling in this
research is the emphatic alignment across
academic, practitioner, and consulting
audiences on number 1, 2 and 3.
Implications for Researchers:
Research providing insight on the whole
business of value management is indicated
–perhaps building on the work of Dr.
Jim Anderson at Kellogg. Are there
better, more profitable ways to quantify
value of a new offering stream? What
are the differential impacts of value being
communicated thought the agents of a
firm, a trusted third-party advisor, a peer
in another firm, a competitor? Research
which would provide additional insight on
the most effective ways to package value
in a quantifiable way, and overcome the
obstacles involved in even beginning the
dialog, let alone closing business would be
most helpful.
Although Value Communication was cited
as key to the role of B-to-B marketers, in
reviewing the anecdotal responses, research
on how to better improve the marketing/
sales connection was a component of
“Trend Number one.” How can we better
work to improve the dialogue, build more
effective “on the road tools”, and prove
to management that when these tools are
deployed, sales efficiency and effectiveness
improves, would all be seen as critical as
we move into the next decade.
Continued research on approaches
and insight on the discernment of
opportunities to create fundamental new
value for firms -- and instruction on how
to embed this is a core competency would
be more valuable than ever right now.
Building on the work of Dr. Abbie Griffin
to create tangible approaches in helping
firm uncover value creation opportunities
that lie between a firms business design
and the business design of their key
customers we be of highly leveraged value.
Summary Thoughts for Researchers:
As we move into the new decade,
business-to-business and industrial firms
have done just about all the cutting they
can. For real this time. For many of the
firms we encounter, we’re seeing that there
are not enough marketers left to even
do a reasonably good job of outsourcing
elements of their function.
So the focus now is turning to the top line.
Research initiatives which can help firms
identify organizational approaches,
processes, tools, and insights on how to
drive organic growth, and create stepfunctions in value -- have always been
important. They’re more than important
than ever as we look to the dawn of what
we hope will be a much brighter decade.
Ralph A. Oliva
Executive Director
Institute for the Study
of Business Markets
[email protected]
PAGE 6
2009 ISBM Dissertation Award
Winners Announced
T
he ISBM is pleased to announce three winning entries in its 2009
Dissertation support award competition, selected from a total of
thirty-one entries:
Special Issue of Industrial
Marketing Management on
Business to Business Branding
Industrial Marketing Management announces the call
for papers for a special issue on Business to Business
Branding. The deadline for submission is 30 December
2010.
• Ranjan Banerjee, University of Minnesota
“Incentive Design for Internal Suppliers: Structural Analysis of a Field
Experiment”
PhD Advisors George John and Om Narasimhan
For guidelines visit www.elsevier.com/wps/find/journaldescription.cws_home/505720/authorinstructions. Any
questions can be emailed to guest editors: Dr. George
Christodoulides, [email protected] or Dr.
Sheena Leek, [email protected].
Ranjan Banerjee
• Mahima Hada, The Pennsylvania State University,
“Referral Equity of the Supplier Firm”
PhD Advisors Rajdeep Grewal and Gary L. Lilien
We would love to hear from you. If you
wish to comment on any of the articles
(or have thoughts for future articles),
please pass them on. Your suggestions
will make the newsletter better and more
responsive to your needs. Please email
your correspondence to:
Mahima Hada
• William Zahn, The University of Houston
“Exploration and Exploitation: How Competition Motivates through
Challenge and Threat”
PhD Advisor Steven Brown
Dissertation competition entries are judged on the rigor of the
proposed work and the relevance of that work to B-to-B marketing
practice. The winners will each receive grants of $7500 to support
their research.
COMMENTS... IDEAS...
Newsletter Editor
Lori Nicolini ([email protected])
William Zahn
The ISBM dissertation support award competition has supported outstanding B-to-B dissertation
work since its inception in 1991. To see details on the 2010 competition and a list of past
winners see http://isbm.smeal.psu.edu/researcher/award
Institute for the Study of Business Markets
Smeal College of Business
The Pennsylvania State University
484 Business Building
University Park, PA 16802
USA
+1-814-863-2782 • WWW.ISBM.ORG
Congratulations to all!
IPSS Update: ISBM Ph.D. Seminar Series Spring 2010
I
am pleased to announce that Spring 2010 is the eighth semester of IPSS and we are offering
two courses:
Mark Bergen and George John (University of Minnesota) are teaching Channel Management.
This course is designed to provide a foundation for doctoral students interested in examining
channels issues (designing and/or managing channels). It will identify, review and critique a
variety of theoretical topics in the channels field.
Gerry Tellis (University of Southern California) is teaching Innovation
Strategy. Innovation—the use of new technology to create new
Mark Bergen
George John
business models, products, and services—is a powerful force in world
economies that is responsible for the steady improvement in consumers’ standard of living throughout history.
This seminar will give students an appreciation of the issues, competing viewpoints, research methods, major
findings, and unresolved problems in the area of innovation strategy.
Both of these courses have enrolments of about a dozen students from four continents. In our next newsletter
I will provide details about our Fall 2010 offereings.
Raj Grewal
Director - IPSS
[email protected]
Gerard Tellis