ISBM Research
N E W S L E T T E R
December 8, 2011
Volume 4, Issue 3
IN THIS ISSUE . . .
In This Issue ............................................ 1
The B2B Leadership Board: Shaping What’s
Next in B2B’s Future .......................... 2
Relevant Marketing Knowledge: Moving From
Findings to Application in B2B Firms .....3
From the Membership ... Rethinking and
Reinventing Innovation: Sometimes
it’s “In the Box” Thinking That’s Most
Important ..........................................5
Ph.D. Student Camp for Research in B-to-B
Markets to be held August 2012 ..........6
University of Chicago to Host 2012 ISBM
B-to-B Academic Conference.................7
IPSS Update ............................................7
Academic Conference 2012 - Call for
Papers ................................................8
Industrial Marketing Management - Call for
Papers ................................................8
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
In This Issue . . .
A
s the northern hemisphere days
shorten, we seek ways to brighten
the increasingly long periods of
darkness. In this newsletter we feature an
announcement of an exciting new ISBM
initiative that we hope will bring some
brightness into your (professional) life: the
B2B Leadership Board, chaired by (and
reported by) Fred Wiersema. Read Fred’s
Gary L. Lilien
Raj Grewal
article...we seek more than your reaction we seek your involvement. Plan to become engaged!
We are pleased to recognize the newest ISBM Fellow, Bernie Jaworski, a charter
member of the B2B Board. Bernie addresses an issue that is central to the
mission of the Board: Relevant Marketing Knowledge (in a B2B context). We
hope Bernie’s remarks influence and inform your work.
Ralph Oliva’s “From the Membership” column reports on our very successful
September Members’ Meeting, focused on the issue of Reinventing Innovation.
As you will see, many of the presenters shared exciting new ideas, and Ralph
identifies a number of intriguing research topics.
Raj introduces the Spring 2012 IPSS lineup—Christophe Van den Bulte will
be offering a course on B2B Social Networks and Gerry Tellis will be offering a
course on Innovation. Please bring the availability of these excellent courses to
the attention of your PhD students.
We close with two “hold the date” notices: The biennial ISBM PhD camp will
be held in Chicago on 14-15 August (just before the AMA Summer Educator’s
conference. Abbie Griffin and Lisa Scheer will co-chair the camp, which will
include an (optional) pre-conference workshop on “Theory in B2B Markets”
offered by Ajay Kohli on 14 August.
The biennial ISBM B2B Academic conference will also be held in Chicago, 1516 August, partially overlapping with the PhD camp. We seek your abstracts
and proposals for special sessions.
A very full issue indeed. Enjoy!
Gary and Raj
Gary L. Lilien
Research Director
Institute for the Study
of Business Markets
Raj Grewal
Associate Research Director
Institute for the Study
of Business Markets
As always, we hope you find this issue a valuable resource to connect with the ISBM community
(practitioners, faculty, and students) around the world. If you would like to suggest or contribute
items, please let either of us know. This issue and past issues or our newsletter can be found at
http://isbm.smeal.psu.edu/research/isbm-research-newsletter.
PAGE 2
The B2B Leadership Board: Shaping What’s Next in
B2B’s Future
L
ast fall, I was
invited to
join an ISBM
vision task force
to take a critical
look at the
Institute’s current
and future role in
Fred Wiersema
the B2B domain.
As part of our inquiry, we obtained
input from member firms, B2B
academics and others in the ISBM
community, which renewed our
appreciation for ISBM’s current
role but also reaffirmed the very real
challenges that the field is facing.
Building on all that and on what
constituents felt they needed most
from ISBM, a vision emerged with
ISBM playing a defining role in
shaping what’s next in B2B’s future.
In August 2011, ISBM raised
its sights and committed to an
ambitious, multi-year endeavor
-- the B2B Leadership Board. Its
aspiration is to foster fundamental
advances in the knowledge and
practice of B2B marketing, and
in doing so elevate marketing’s
strategic role and business impact.
The intent is to bring together and
engage a highly committed group of
B2B academics and forward-looking
senior practitioners from the ISBM
community to provide thoughtand action-leadership in the B2B
domain and support high-potential
initiatives. I feel honored to have
been named the chair of the B2B
Board, with Gary Lilien serving as
vice chair.
We held a kickoff meeting this past
August at Harvard Business School
with a core group of 22 ISBM
Fellows and other B2B academics
(we will involve lead practitioners
later). In all, it was a promising
start. What struck me was the
candor with which we looked at the
status quo and the energy for our
lofty aspirations. We discussed the
task force’s findings and considered
whether current B2B thinking is
up to date or dated. We talked
about closing the chasm between
B2B research and practice, and
the need to attract and prepare the
next generation of B2B researchers
and practitioners. The prevailing
sentiment was that we need to
pursue major, even transformational
changes: simply doing more of
what we are already doing will not
get us ready for the future. Three
dominant challenges guided the
meeting, which in turn shaped the
B2B Board’s initial focus areas.
1. The dramatically changing B2B
landscape. The battle for customers
is fiercer than ever, notably in
globalizing and information-driven
markets where customers reign
supreme, cost pressures are intense,
and disruptive technologies are
altering ingrained buying patterns.
Shifting demands are creating
unprecedented and often ill-defined
challenges. With customers so
critical to companies’ performance,
one would expect these to be glory
days for B2B marketing – but they
aren’t. Could that be because many
of our B2B marketing frameworks
and insights stem from an earlier,
gentler era? Yesterday’s findings and
prescriptions often are no match for
today’s burning issues, let alone the
challenges that practitioners will be
facing tomorrow. No wonder there
is a huge thirst for new insights
to move forward and create ‘next
practices.’
For B2B academics, evolving
marketplaces are opening up
important new avenues for inquiry,
albeit in dynamic settings quite
unlike our traditional research
domains. At the very least, they
should make us question how well
we understand the burning issues of
today’s practitioners, and whether
current knowledge and research
approaches can provide solutions for
their problems.
The B2B Board’s first big
initiative focuses on framing the
issues by deepening our grasp
of the challenges, driving forces
and major trends affecting B2B
practice, both now and in the
future. That will help us shape
an authoritative and actionable
agenda for research, practice and
competence development.
2. The big gap between what we
know and what we need to know.
The reservoir of B2B knowledge
– both research and practice – is
extensive, yet a lot of rich insights
remain untapped. For instance,
research findings make their way
into practice only slowly or not
at all; practitioners’ insights (and
problems) often do not reach
or register with researchers; and
companies hoping to learn from
the experiences of others find that
extracting actionable insight from
best-practice examples is difficult.
The B2B Board’s second focus area
is knowledge transfer, i.e. to help
sort out, distill and aggregate the
current knowledge of pivotal B2B
topics, then find ways to share
the findings broadly across the
B2B community. For starters, we
will pilot several highly-focused
roundtables with a small number
continued on page 3
PAGE 3
The B2B Leadership Board: Shaping What’s Next in
B2B’s Future continued from page 2
of academics and lead practitioners
to make headway on some burning
issues.
3. The need to focus more of our
research on fewer, but truly vital issues.
Many of today’s customer-related
challenges deal with difficult, multidimensional issues. The challenges
arise because adequate solutions
are not readily available. To make
progress on this front, we will need
knowledge breakthroughs that may
require multiple angles of inquiry and
collaborative research. That in turn
calls for coordination and clarity of
direction.
The B2B Board’s third focus area
is research prioritization. We will
shortly embark on an ambitious
multi-year research journey with at
least one over-arching organizing
theme or issue that gets to the heart
of key challenges facing the B2B
domain. The intent is to bring
together multiple practice-oriented
and research-focused contributions,
drawing on input from practitioners
and/or getting them involved in the
journey.
What can you do?
The B2B Board is a major endeavor.
Its impact will come from mobilizing
and engaging B2B academics and
lead practitioners both in and beyond
the core group. We will keep you
posted on emerging initiatives and
invite your feedback, suggestions and
participation through this publication
and elsewhere. Here is what you can
do:
1. Provide your feedback on our
plans. Specifically, we welcome
suggestions for knowledge
sharing topics for a focused
roundtable.
2. Suggest high-potential
initiatives that you would like
to champion with our support.
3. Provide any other input that
could help us jointly shape
what’s next in the B2B domain.
I look forward to hearing from you!
Note: At the ISBM Academic
Conference in Chicago on August 15-16,
2012, just before the AMA meeting, we
will include an open forum to review our
initiatives and progress.
Fred Wiersema
ISBM Fellow and Chair, B2B Leadership
Board
[email protected]
Relevant Marketing Knowledge:
Moving From Findings to Application in B2B Firm
T
he responsibility to produce and
consume practical, implementable
“findings and frameworks” is a joint
responsibility – shared by both academics
and thoughtful practitioners. It is
comparatively easier to produce works
that are exceptionally easy to consume –
Bernie Jaworski
“the two minute manager,” “management
by walking around,” and “who stole my cheese”, but these
works rarely possess the necessary empirical foundation
or tight conceptual rigor to withstand serious debate.
Thus, the thoughtful manager has a responsibility to be,
well, thoughtful. That is, to challenge herself intellectually
by reading more substantial, theory-based work that is
very practical and build a personal network of thought
leaders and publications to test and stretch one’s mindset.
Moreover, she needs to make her role more clearly
understood by the academic world.
What Academics Can Do to Increase Use
There are several steps that are essential to building a
programmatic, managerially centered research stream.
These steps include (a) spending a significant amount of
time in the world of the target practitioner, (b) reflecting
very broadly and from multiple vantage points about
that world, (c) engaging in two way interactions within
their world be it face-to-face, blogs, or other forms of
two-way communication, and (d) ‘pre-testing” ideas with
practitioners.
Spending Time. I am not sure I agree with Malcolm
Gladwell’s (2008) observation that it takes 10,000 hours
to develop expertise, but let’s say he is in the ballpark.
Running executive education sessions and talking with
executives does increase one’s level of expertise – but let’s
not overestimate our level of understanding. So, the
key point is ask yourself is “How much time would the
continued on page 4
PAGE 4
Relevant Marketing Knowledge:
Moving From Findings to Application in B2B Firms
continued from page 3
practitioner need to spend with you – to understand the
world of top-tier, peer view publishing?” And hold yourself
to a similar standard.
Multiple vantage points. Each manager has a biased
and unique perspective on their own world. In effect, it
is a small numbers game for each practitioner. So, along
the way, it is important not to overplay any individual
observation. One needs to be much broader than a “day in
the life” of the manager. Rather think about the “month in
the life” or “year in the life” of a manager.
Two-way interaction: Insights and Blogs. Rather than
thinking working papers and reprints are the best way to
interface with managers, why not include “insights” - short,
one paragraph summaries for students and the practicing
manager. If the entire discipline developed these “insight
summaries,” managers could search the web for relevant
insights for their pressing problems. Indeed, it would be
great to see the emergence of “manager friendly blogs”
where a given researcher writes a research-based column on
B2B marketing – key insights that are similar in spirit to
the HBR summaries.
Managers as ‘test-sites’. It would be helpful for a
researcher to develop a small set of thought practitioners
that represent the ‘test’ or ‘alpha’ site for idea development.
My recommendation is to find a handful of executive
“friends” who are willing to play this role. In the best
of worlds, you provide the logic flow for the “insight
summary” and ask: (a) does it hold water?, (b) can you
provide support examples?, and (c) can you provide counter
examples?
What Practitioners Can Do to Increase Use
At a superficial level the advice for practitioners is quite
simple: (a) expose yourself to deep ideas, (b) challenge
yourself, and (c) develop a set of academic market mavens
who act guides to the marketing academy.
Spend time and expose broadly. My experience is that
when someone rises to the ranks of CMO they are not only
savvy in the business world and very smart, but they think
conceptually. This ability to thinking conceptually, in my
view, should be a goal of all managers who want to move
up the corporate ladder. So, how is this accomplished?
Certainly there are no easy answers, but a starting point is
the managerially oriented top-tier manager journals such as
Harvard Business Review, Sloan Management Review, and
California Management Review. Marketing-specific reports
such as those provided by the Marketing Science Institute,
ISBM, and other centers also produce relevant knowledge
that is easily digestible.
I believe the most important advice is to target a specific
and aspirational role in the organization and closely
examine the role requirements. What are your knowledge
and experience gaps relative to these core tasks? While the
experience gaps are not completely under your control, the
knowledge tasks can be filled – to a degree – by reading,
executive education, attending conferences, mentoring, and
other forms of knowledge dissemination.
Two-way interaction: market-mavens. Market-mavens
are individuals who love to connect and share information
about their specific domains of knowledge (Feick and Price
1987). The notion here is simply to develop a relationship
with someone who has deep expertise in an area that is
highly relevant to your practice. This can happen directly,
by reaching out to faculty members whose work you have
read or indirectly by visiting key research based centers.
Experiment in the field – “test sites”. While exposing
oneself to new information and knowledge is a great first
step, it is biased toward thought, and does not address the
need to take action in organizations. Since I have focused
on both thinking and acting, my recommendation is to
conduct “field experiments” to test some of the ideas. My
advice here is not to generate new knowledge, but rather
this is a field test to the degree of managerial relevance in
your firm.
Bernie Jaworski
ISBM Fellow
Executive Director, Drucker-IMD Partnership
Peter F. Drucker Chair of Management and Liberal Arts, Drucker
[email protected]; [email protected]
(left to right) Raj Grewal, Bernie Jaworski, and Ralph Oliva
PAGE 5
From the Membership . . . Rethinking and Reinventing
Innovation: Sometimes it’s “In the Box” Thinking That’s
Most Important
N
Nothing is more
challenging for
B2B marketers
these days than
fostering innovation,
and our September
2011 ISBM
Members Meeting
on “Reinventing
Innovation”
provided challenging
Ralph Oliva
frameworks and food
for thought. What we heard provided
some very interesting potential directions
for research as well. And -- not surprisingly
-- some of the lessons learned went back
to the basics, that you really can innovate
if you are just willing to listen to your
customers.
The meeting began with an electrifying
presentation from Larry Keeley of the
Doblin group, who built on his “Ten types
of Innovation®” framework and spoke
about the “plumb0ing” you need to bring
about innovation, a new way of identifying
opportunities he termed “Vergence”,
and some great “new model” innovation
cases. His “Vergence” tool – a way to use
networked information to spot market
opportunities - was most intriguing. It
would be great to have some ISBM
researchers better understand this tool
and delve into other research implications
which might come from it.
Bernie Jaworski, newly inducted ISBM
fellow who recently assumed the Peter
Drucker Chair at Claremont Graduate
University, provided a framework to
diagnose and guide the development of
effective alliances in emerging markets.
We also heard a great gritty case from
WESCO – Mike Ludwig (CMO) and his
Lean Value Creation Team outlined their
approach to decommoditize everything
they sell by going beyond the product
with a systematic and forensic “search for
savings.”
Dawn Astorino from LORD Corporation
provided a step-by-step approach on
how to innovate in building a B-to-B
brand. Another area for research: can
we really build a stronger foundation for
understanding the power and leverage of
strong B-to-B brands? She posited that:
“People connect with LORD because
of our products. They stay with LORD
because of our people”. Dawn is providing
concrete approaches on helping their
people “live the brand” – and build true
innovation in customer experience in a
very “industrial” B-to-B setting.
We finished the first day with an eyeopening presentation from Bob Little from
Innography on how marketers can help
mobilize their firm’s intellectual property
– often a hidden source of enormous
potential growth. He demonstrated some
innovative tools for identifying such
underutilized assets. Bob and his team
use semantic scanning and the US patent
office database to create very revealing
insights on market opportunities. It
would be wonderful to have a researcher
connect with Bob, and see what other sorts
of insight can come from a line of research
in this area.
The second day of our meeting kicked off
with an outstanding presentation from
Rick Segal on the “@Work State of Mind.”
He outlined that B-to-B Marketing – and
Market communication in particular –
may in fact be “dead” as we used to know
it. With ongoing and ubiquitous electronic
connectivity, people can “shift gears”, and
go from work, to home, to play, back to
work alternatively throughout the day.
Marketers will need to develop tools and
techniques to intercept the “@Work State
of Mind” through the day in the lifetime
of the B-to-B customer.
To illustrate his approach, Rick invited
Linda McGovern, CMO of USG who
shared the “UltraLight SHEETROCK®”
story. A big lesson: never, never be afraid
to ask the obvious questions and then
really listen. The problem with their 130
year old wall board product? It was heavy.
Instead of just living with “heavy,” USG
decided that they could make it lighter,
and are now growing their business in one
of the most down markets in history – the
US housing market. She noted that this
innovation that came from finally listening
to a customer complaint that had been
around but ignored for many years. She
illustrated the customer discovery and
the launch of this product almost entirely
through digital means. She also brought
the “Voice of the Customer” directly to a
skeptical USG management team through
digital and video feedback.
Sandy Diehl from United Technologies
provided insights on how to get a big,
multi-divisional, siloed organizations to
work together to create new value. Those
who work in such organizations recognize
the challenges and opportunities associated
with effecting such coordination. Some
very practical food for thought and
principles of navigation based on his
experience – many of which would provide
interesting lines of inquiry for research.
Finally, Jeneanne Rae from Motiv
wrapped up the meeting, outlining
three pathways to service innovation –
“productivity push”, “access advantage”,
“the engagement edge”.
“Reinventing Innovation” requires
thinking beyond what’s become the
traditional “out of the box”. In fact,
Linda McGovern, Bob Little, and others
showed us that a lot of innovation can
happen “inside the box,” doing a better
job of what we talk about all the time.
Business marketers need to step into the
lead on innovation, seeing with fresh eyes,
listening with fresh ears. We need to turn
all of our senses in new ways to reinvent
the way we connect with customers,
create value, serve needs ahead of the
competition.
The meeting provided directions for
practitioners and numerous challenges and
opportunism for academics. I invite the
academic community to take on some of
those challenges.
Ed Note: For more details on any of these
presentation or connections with speakers,
please contact Ralph directly at
[email protected]
Ralph A. Oliva
Executive Director
Institute for the Study
of Business Markets
Professor of Marketing
[email protected]
PAGE 6
Ph.D. Student Camp for Research in B-to-B Markets to
be held August 2012
W
e are pleased to announce that the next Ph.D. Student Camp for Research in Business-to-Business Markets will
be held in Chicago, IL at the University of Chicago’s Gleacher Center, downtown Chicago, August 14-15th, just
prior to the 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 August 15 and continues
through August 16, which also will also be held at the Gleacher Center. There will also be a pre-camp seminar, taught by
Professor Ajay Kohli on Theory Construction on August 14th.
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-to-business 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 the University
of Chicago with support from the Marketing Science Institute (MSI).
There is a small fee to attend and most meals will be provided. Attendees and their schools will be responsible for travel
and lodging costs.
We will now begin accepting applications for the camp; applications are due by April 1, 2012. Look for further details and
announcements on elmar and the ISBM website (http://phdcamp12.isbm.org) in early 2012.
If you have any additional questions, please contact either of the Camp Directors: Abbie Griffin at
[email protected] or Lisa Scheer at [email protected].
We hope students and faculty from all over the globe will attend this event.
Abbie Griffin
Camp Director
University of Utah
[email protected]
Lisa K. Scheer
Camp Director
University of Missouri
[email protected]
Abbie Griffin
2010 PhD Camp at Harvard Business School
2010 PhD Camp, at Harvard Business School
Lisa K. Scheer
PAGE 7
University of Chicago to Host
2012 ISBM B-to-B Academic
Conference, August 15-16th
M
ark your calendars! We are pleased to announce that the
University of Chicago, Booth School of Business will be
hosting the 2012 ISBM BtoB Academic Conference at
their downtown Chicago facility, The Gleacher Center. The event
is scheduled to begin at noon on 15 August 2012 and continue
through the end of the day on 16 August. That time is just prior
to the AMA Summer Educator’s Conference which will be held in
Chicago beginning on 17 August. Raj Grewal and Gary Lilien from
the ISBM and Pradeep Chintagunta from the University of Chicago
will be acting as conference co-chairs.
Some features of the conference:
•
•
Overlap with the 2012 BtoB PhD Camp. Elsewhere in this
issue, please see the announcement of the 2012 ISBM BtoB
PhD Camp—which will be held on 14-15 August, also at the
Gleacher Center. 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.
Invited plus competitive paper sessions. We are entertaining
proposals for special sessions on any relevant BtoB topic
immediately. Please send your proposals to Lori Nicolini
[email protected], and include topic, participants and
proposed format. (See details on the call for papers elsewhere in
this newsletter).
Conference information will be updated as it becomes available at
http://aca12.isbm.org. 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]
Pradeep K. Chintangunta, [email protected]
Pradeep K. Chintagunta
IPSS Update
W
ith the semester winding down in State
College it gets one thinking of the
coming winter months ahead. This Fall
we had two well received IPSS courses, Abbie
Griffin taught Qualitative Research Methods and
Raji Srinivasan taught Marketing Metrics in BtoB.
I want to thank both these scholars on behalf of
the PhD student community for spending their
valuable time on what is truly a service to the
discipline.
I am pleased to announce that the courses we
will be offering this coming Spring semester are
repeats of very popular offerings. Christophe Van
den Bulte returns to teach his Social Networks in
BtoB course and Gerry Tellis will offer his very
popular Innovation Strategy course. The details
on the courses are available from the ISBM
website http://ipss.isbm.org
Please bring these two seminars to the attention
of your promising BtoB Ph.D. students.
Students should register online at
http://ipss.isbm.org. Additionally if there is
any other feedback or suggestions, please do not
hesitate to contact me.
Raj Grewal
Director - IPSS
[email protected]
PAGE 8
Call for Papers:
ISBM Academic Conference August 15-16, 2012
T
he Institute for the Study of Business Markets will be holding its 2012
Academic Conference in Chicago, IL on August 15-16 (immediately
preceding the Summer AMA Educators’ Conference). We are delighted to
report that the venue is the University of Chicago, Booth School of Business’s,
downtown facility at The Gleacher Center. The conference will “kick-off”
Wednesday, August 15th at noon and continue until 5:00PM on Thursday,
August 16th, ending with a cocktail reception – as we have done in the past. (The
Academic Conference will partially overlap with the ISBM B-to-B Research Camp
(http://phdcamp12.isbm.org), to be held at the same venue on August 14th and
15th, PhD Students are encouraged to attend both events).
The objective of the conference, as always, is to develop new ideas and new ways to address the pressing issues at the
interface of the B-to-B academic communities; generate new research approaches and ideas; and to provide a forum for
interaction amongst the world’s leading B-to-B researchers.
The three of us will be co-chairing the conference. For conference details visit http://aca12.isbm.org. As the website
indicates, we invite you to submit an abstract and/or special session for the conference before the due date of 1 March
2012. Please email your abstracts to Lori Nicolini, Conference Administrator ([email protected]).
We hope you will be able to attend the conference. If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact us
([email protected], [email protected], or [email protected]).
Raj Grewal, [email protected]
Gary L. Lilien, [email protected]
Pradeep K. Chintangunta, [email protected]
Call for Papers:
Industrial Marketing Management, Special Issue
Maximizing the B2B Buyer-Supplier Relationship in Digital Era
M
anaging buyer-supplier relationships has always been
crucial to firm success. In order to do this, buyers
and suppliers must maximize trust and cooperation,
minimize opportunism and risk, and collaborate on setting
and accomplishing goals. These activities all require open
and extensive communication channels. However, in the
digital era these communication channels have changed.
Buyer-supplier relationships are less dependent on face
to face communication and more dependent on digital
communication. Furthermore, the ongoing emergence of
new technologies, such as Software-as-a-Service and social
media, has made effective communications even more
crucial as firms decide which technologies are appropriate
for them. It is crucial for both buyers and suppliers
to understand how these new technologies affect their
relationships and how these technologies can be optimized.
While a great deal of published research on buyer-supplier
relationships in the digital age has focused on consumer
markets, very little published research has dealt with the
impact of digital communications on the relationships
between buyers and suppliers in industrial marketing. This
special issue of Industrial Marketing Management invites
submissions that contribute to a better understanding of the
role of industrial or B2B buyer-supplier relationships in the
digital era. Papers can be conceptual, empirical or casebased. Indicative topics include:
•
Optimizing communication through technology
•
The role of the buyer-supplier relationship in
technology adoption
•
The evolving role of trust in the technology era
continued on page 9
PAGE 9
Call for Papers:
Industrial Marketing Management, Special Issue
Maximizing the B2B Buyer-Supplier Relationship in Digital Era
continued from page 8
•
Minimizing risk through technology
•
The emergence of Software-as-a-Service
•
The role of social media in B2B buyer-supplier
relationships
•
The potential pitfalls of technology in buyersupplier relationships
•
Online purchasing in the B2B environment
•
The evolving role of the supplier in the digital era
Please submit your papers as an e-mail attachment to the
guest editors shown below no later than September 1, 2012,
with a copy also sent to the editor at plaplaca@journalimm.
com. IMM submissions are generally between 25 and fifty
double-spaced manuscript pages. Please submit the paper
as an MSWord file. PDF papers will not be accepted. You
must also attach a letter stating that you wish the paper to
be evaluated for this special issue and that it is an original
work never before published nor under review at another
journal. For more information please see the IMM website:
http://www.elsevier.com/locate/indmarman.
Please address questions to the guest editors:
Richard Lancioni
Department of Marketing and Supply Chain
Management
Temple University
[email protected]
Michael Obal
Department of Marketing and Supply Chain
Management
Temple University
[email protected]
COMMENTS... IDEAS...
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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:
Newsletter Editor
Lori Nicolini ([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