While the use of data in business-to-business marketing is not a new phenomenon, the digitization and digitalization of business-to-business firms' business models have recently attracted a great ...deal of attention. With the aim of creating an overview and consolidating this stream of research, the present paper offers a brief historical overview of research on digitization and digitalization in business-to-business markets – concluding that this discussion has a long tradition and, thus, is not a new phenomenon. We develop a definition of digitization capability as a basis for discussing how a firm's digitization capability interacts with its business model to allow for data-enabled growth, i.e. its digitalization, and we highlight promising avenues for future research.
•Academic interest in digitalization has a long history stemming back to the first volume of IMM.•The presented conceptualization of a firm’s digitization capability offers a foundation for further research.•Applying a business model framework offers a structured approach to consolidate the manifold contributions made.
In the light of the current coronavirus crisis, business-to-business firms face a variety of challenges in a complex and fast-changing environment. In order to provide structured analysis and to ...guide strategic decision-making, we present a novel, five-step approach for analyzing the impact of a crisis on a firm's business model. We applied the approach with eight business-to-business firms and find support for its usefulness. The evidence suggests very different impacts of the coronavirus crisis on business-to-business firms, and that understanding these differences is important for strategizing during the crisis but also to navigating successfully into the future. We also describe six different types of crisis impacts on business models. We conclude by developing managerial implications and questions for future research.
•We present a novel, five-step approach for analyzing the impact of a crisis on a business model.•We define six different types of crisis impacts on business models.•We develop managerial implications for managing through a crisis by analyzing business model alignment.
Purpose
As a great deal of strategy execution takes the form of strategic projects, how you align these projects ultimately determines the success or failure of your strategy. Here, we discuss four ...executive challenges executives need to tackle to successfully manage a strategy in a project-based world.
Design/methodology/approach
Conceptual approach entailing illustrative case-examples
Findings
We find four executive challenges to tackle in order to successfully manage a strategy in a project-based world.
Research limitations/implications
As the study draws upon conceptual arguments, future studies need to assess the verisimilitude and boundary conditions of the challenges.
Practical implications
By thinking of a strategy through a project-based lens, and understanding the challenges thereof, executives should be better able to bridge strategy formulation and execution.
Social implications
A project-based approach to strategy is not necessarily limited to a for-profit sector; NGOs and governmental organizations may similarly learn from and draw upon a project-based approach to strategy.
Originality/value
As little research within strategy has explicitly conveyed a project-based lens, the study emphasizes a novel approach to strategy.
The construct of the “buying center” is arguably one of the most important concepts in the industrial-marketing literature. Despite many seminal studies, research into the buying center needs to take ...the many trends unfolding in the environmental context into account in order to remain relevant in the future. One particularly timely topic that has been overlooked by buying center research is IT governance. Against this backdrop, this study aims to examine how the dynamics of the buying center depends on the IT governance structure in the buying situation and the accompanying social networks. In so doing, the study contributes by: (i) cross-fertilizing the literature streams on the buying center, IT governance and social network analysis, (ii) proposing an integrative typology that provides a better understanding of the buying center from an IT-governance perspective, and (iii) outlining emerging propositions to guide future work.
•The buying center is a seminal construct in industrial marketing.•Despite of the importance of IT to the buying center, no studies have explicitly linked the construct with IT governance.•The present paper addresses this gap by integrating the two literature streams in an integrative framework.
Frontline autonomy, commonly defined as decision-making power distributed to frontline employees (FLEs), has received an increasing amount of attention from scholars and practitioners alike. Despite ...the many fruitful efforts within this longstanding field of study, the literature is divided on the proper conceptualization of FLE autonomy. One way to integrate extant insights may be to see FLE autonomy as a relational phenomenon. Hence, the present study suggests that research on FLE autonomy should examine the dynamic and relational interplay among management, FLEs, and customers. In this paper, I address this issue by reviewing the extant literature in order to develop a relational model of FLE autonomy.
Marketers face many daily dilemmas and conflicting consumer pressures. As such, there is a need for marketers to become more paradoxical in how they consider their roles. In other words, they must be ...able to combine two seemingly opposite forces in their marketing efforts. In this article, I suggest that marketers are being drawn into four distinct paradoxical roles: (1) authentic illusionist, (2) conforming rebel, (3) empathetic technologist, and (4) artistic scientist. A failure to acknowledge these roles may be disadvantageous to businesses in a marketplace. However, by learning and enacting these paradoxical roles, marketers can create a competitive advantage for their organizations. While the concept of paradoxes has previously been described in the field of marketing, the present study is unique in that it provides four specific paradoxical roles for marketers and introduces the DUAL roadmap to help effectively manage them.
A crisis, like the COVID-19 pandemic or a cyber attack, not only creates the necessity for crisis management in business-to-business firms aimed at addressing the immediate challenges, but also ...offers opportunities to shape business markets by changing exchanges, collaborations, and institutions. In order to develop a conceptual framework to capture the market-shaping potential of a crisis, we integrate insights from risk management and strategic management, and discuss their implications for market shaping. As such, this paper builds a bridge between the reactive nature of crisis management during a crisis and proactive market shaping, and offers new insights into market shaping based on an underutilized source of inspiration, namely crisis management. Based on resilience (from risk management) and responsiveness (from strategic management), we propose four market-shaping opportunities. Beyond the theoretical novelty of contributing to our understanding of market shaping based on crisis management, our framework has managerial implications for market shaping and highlights a set of interesting research questions that can guide future studies.
•The paper outlines how reactive crisis management can inform proactive market shaping.•A conceptual, four-dimensional model of crisis management options is developed.•This is translated into four opportunities for market shaping based on crisis management.•Executives need to monitor own, competitors’, and customers’ crisis management initiatives.
While industrial marketing often comprises a process that, at least in principle, mirrors Bayesian reasoning, the notion of Bayesian inference has predominantly been utilized in the marketing field ...as a methodological tool. This article suggests that the practice of industrial marketing itself should be (re)conceptualized as a Bayesian process of belief-updating that entails a continuous cognitive cycle of formulation of hypotheses (i.e., beliefs about the market) and the subsequent updating of those hypotheses through exposure to market evidence (e.g., data from the market). A Bayesian perspective on industrial marketing enables a synthesis of a broad body of extant research as well as a focus on the interconnection between executives' market beliefs (theories-in-use) and belief-updating (assessing the validity of those beliefs in view of market evidence). A view of industrial marketing as a Bayesian process not only enhances our understanding in general but also fosters insights into market learning in uncertain and volatile situations. A Bayesian conceptualization suggests a new understanding of industrial marketing that also informs a typology of marketing approaches. We outline opportunities for developing a better understanding of the Bayesian foundation of industrial marketing.
•The purpose of this article is to suggest that industrial marketing itself should be (re)conceptualized as a Bayesian process of belief-updating.•A Bayesian perspective on industrial marketing entails a synthesis of a broad body of extant research as well as a focus on the interconnection between executives market beliefs (theories-in-use) and belief updating (assessing the validity of beliefs in view of market evidence).
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