Ebook: Business Marketing In The Decade Ahead : The Key Challenges We Face

About the Guest Editor After completing 27 years of steady advancementin industrial sales and marketing positions with such firms as KennecottCopper, Eastman Kodak, Nordson, and Automated Packaging, Michael K.Rich left his position as vice-president and general manager of North-WestTelecommunications to initiate a career in academe. After securing a tenuretrackposition at California University of Pennsylvania, he entered thedoctoral program at the University of Pittsburgh. During the six-and-a-halfyears required to complete that objective on a part-time basis, he developedan academic marketing discipline while achieving tenure and promotion tothe rank of professor. He subsequently developed a marketing discipline atSouthern Polytechnic State University in Marietta, Georgia while achievingtenure. He is now a professor of marketing at Southwest State University, inMarshall, Minnesota while also fulfilling responsibilities as the fieldmarketingadvisor for the Agricultural Utilization Research Institute (AURI)that serves the State of Minnesota. He has had several articles published inJBIM and continues to serve on its editorial board. He is also the bookreview editor for the journal and has previously served as a guest editor. Hehas effectively completed numerous advising contracts in the fields ofsalesforce training, marketing research, and organizational development. Hisextensive practitioner background with salesforce leadership, advertisingcampaign development, organizational restructuring and businessacquisitions has been a valuable background for effective research andteaching. This special issue features seven papers, five of which were presented duringthe 2000 CBIM Academic Workshop, held in Atlanta, Georgia. Theworkshop, ‘‘Business marketing in the decade ahead: the key challenges weface,’’ featured papers on a wide range of subjects[1]. The papers selectedfor this special issue represent a cross-section of those presented and offersome insight into the potential direction of the marketing field during thecoming decade. Verification of a trend toward continuing specializationwithin the discipline seems to be sustained by the variety of subjects coveredat the conference. This appears to support evidence that the field continuesto mature and assume a life of its own after initially adopting theories andapproaches from other disciplines. There seems to be a paradox developing as technology continues to play anever-increasing role in the business-to-business spectrum – that of pursuingincreased relationship building while embracing a greater dependence onthe inanimate devices that encompass the technology spectrum currentlybeing pursued in business today. As organizations pursue customerrelationship management (CRM), they discover that the integration process,in and of itself, is not enough to retain customers (McKenzie, 2001).Connecting with customers is the bigger challenge and today’s businessesmust find ways to incorporate the new technologies and converse on a globalscale rather than relying on the old marketing, sales, and communicationtechniques. Businesses need to move from a monologue to dialogue withcustomers and from providing traditional services to engaging in valueaddingconversations. CRM integration without a sound approach towardconversation is likely to fall short of producing expected business benefits.Increased bottom-line pressures have caused many organizations to take avery pragmatic approach to improving that number through wholesaledownsizing (or rightsizing to be politically correct). The effect on CRM ofsuch overt moves is not fully understood although early attempts todetermine the magnitude of its impact have been made (Lewin, 2001). Theability of surviving members of an organization to be as aggressive inmeeting customer demands might be tempered with an increased tendencytoward risk-aversion behaviors as security and income stability enter thethought process of those remaining employed. Interests of self will begin tobe considered with greater emphasis when compared with the interests of thecompany. Horizons tend to become more short term than had previouslybeen the case. In short, the time-consuming and sometimes more long-termaspects of building relationships with all of the associated benefits run therisk of being somewhat overlooked when confronted with today’s fast-pacedand technology-driven methods of pursuing business activities in an everincreasingcompetitive global marketplace. Andreas Eggert and Wolfgang Ulaga present the results of their survey in thefirst article to determine the distinction between value and satisfaction asperceived by purchasing managers. They indicate that despite a growingbody of research, it is still not clear how value interacts with relatedmarketing constructs. Although value has been considered pivotal inconsumer marketing and has been widely researched in that regard, businessmarkets have generally been examined for developing methods of valueassessment for physical products. Research on customer value in businessto-business relationships is just now receiving attention and has beenconducted at a conceptual level. This paper reports on actual evaluationsinto whether customer value and satisfaction represent two theoretically andempirically distinct concepts. It further examines whether value is a betterpredictor of behavioral outcomes than satisfaction in a business-marketingcontext. Their research suggests that value and satisfaction can beconceptualized and measured as two distinct, yet complementary, constructs.Thomas Ritter, Ian Wilkinson and Wesley Johnston’s contribution to thisissue, ‘‘Measuring network competence: some international evidence,’’addresses the ability of a firm to develop and manage relations with keysuppliers, customers, and other organizations and to deal effectively with theinteractions among these relations. The authors indicate that a firm’s abilityin this area is its network competence, and has a direct bearing on itscompetitive strength and performance. Firms are not able to decide whetherto have relationships or whether to care about them; the only choice iswhether to cope with them effectively and efficiently. There has beenconsiderable research focusing on the nature and development ofrelationships and networks, and many concepts and measures have beenused to characterize them including power, conflict, trust, commitment andvalue. In order to move forward with this concept, there is a need to explorenetwork competence in other settings and validate the findings of earlierstudies. The first part of the paper is devoted to work performed in Germanythat has led to the development and calibration of a scale to measure a firm’snetwork competence. In the second part of the paper, the results ofpreliminary studies designed to develop and test the validity of the scale inan English-speaking context are reported. The results show that the measureJOURNAL OF BUSINESS & INDUSTRIAL MARKETING, VOL. 17 NO. 2/3 2002 103of network competence is empirically and conceptually distinct to that of themarket orientation scale.The role of Web-based sales in the business-to-business market wasexamined by Kenneth Lord and Alice Collins in their paper, ‘‘Supplier Webpage design and organizational buyer preferences’’. Their study gauged theaccessibility of vendors to organizational customers and compares sellers’approaches to online communication with the preferences expressed bybuyers. The organizational buyer-seller dyad has a number of characteristicsthat enable it to benefit disproportionately (in comparison with the consumermarket) from the e-commerce environment. The requirement in businessmarkets of conformance with specifications that are sometimes complexcorresponds well with the electronic medium’s ability to transmit largeamounts of technical information with immediacy and consistency. Inaddition, business buyers and sellers have long engaged in commerceactivities that have not been as geographically bound as the retail tradingarea that has traditionally characterized consumer buying activity, thusmaking them more receptive to the concept of having the world of buyers andvendors just a click away. An analysis of vendor Web sites demonstrated aneed for more systematic inclusion of prices, on-line ordering, literaturerequests, answers to frequently asked questions, certification informationand financial statements. The fourth paper, by Talai Osmonbekov, Daniel Bello, and David Gillilandentitled, ‘‘Adoption of electronic commerce tools in business procurement:enhanced buying center structure and processes,’’ develops a typology ofe-commerce tools that have come to characterize cutting-edge industrialprocurement. The explosive growth of the Internet and Web-based softwareapplications has brought about increasing adoption of electronic commercetools by businesses to achieve efficiencies in production and marketing ofproducts and services. The assortment of business products and servicesdistributed through the World Wide Web ranges from office equipment,heavy industrial products, and computers to more esoteric services such asconsulting. Internet-based applications provide the means for industrialbuyers to find suppliers in the most efficient way through electronic marketsand communities and to potentially pass on the resulting savings to endusers. E-commerce aspects of purchasing are organized into communicationand transaction tools that encompass both internal and external buyingactivities. The authors developed a model of the impact of e-commerce on thestructure and processes of an organization’s buying center that is fullyexplored in this paper. The impact of the changing buying center onprocurement outcomes in terms of efficiency and effectiveness is alsoanalyzed. Finally, implications for business-to-business marketers andresearchers are discussed. The fifth paper, ‘‘Simulating buying center decision processes: propositionsand methodology,’’ by Regina McNally examines the rules used by buyingcenter members to classify vendors as to whether they would be worth theeffort required to establish and maintain a working relationship. Theuncertainty associated with buying center decisions causes the group tosearch for generalizations that describe the distinguishing characteristics ofsuccessful suppliers. Such generalizations identify the rules used tocategorize future vendors. Such discovery of the best rules is key to accurateclassification. Acknowledging the process of searching for patterns used bybuying center members not only focuses attention on the informationmembers use to derive patterns, but also provides a mechanism forinvestigating how members influence each other’s assessment of the104 JOURNAL OF BUSINESS & INDUSTRIAL MARKETING, VOL. 17 NO. 2/3 2002patterns. Research into rule-discovery tasks has the potential to enablemonitoring of simulated organizational purchasing decision processes in thecontrolled environment of an experiment. Her paper suggests a set ofpropositions and a methodology for examining rule discovery task behaviorin buying centers. The sixth paper, ‘‘Stakeholder analysis for multi-sector innovations,’’ byMichele Bunn, Grant Savage and Betsy Holloway addresses the uniquechallenges confronting a firm when participating in the opportunities madepossible by emerging multi-sector innovations. The greatest challengeconfronting a firm in this position involves the firm’s efforts to influence andshape the market in its favor. This requires strategies for dealing withnumerous stakeholders – many with which the principal firm has had little orno direct experience. The only reason a firm would address such a situationis the potential financial rewards that can be addressed as a result of asuccessful implementation. The firm needs an analytical and systematicprocess for stakeholder analysis to provide the basis for stakeholdermanagement strategies. This paper reviews one significant multi-sectorinnovation, that of wireless technologies for integrated traffic managementand emergency response. It provides an illustrative context fordemonstrating a five-step process for stakeholder analysis. The next article by Cynthia Bean and Leroy Robinson Jr synthesizes currentliterature on environmental changes and the underlying foundations forvalue currently being pursued. They develop evidence that supports thechallenges currently being faced by firms which attempt to use traditionalmethods for determining firm valuation and wealth generation. Historicallyfirms have based their value creation on the transformation of goods as theymove from manufacturer to end-user, as evidenced by Porter’s value chainconcept and its focus on product, logistics and operations. They offerevidence that knowledge acquisition and exploitation becomes the center ofdifferentiation between firms and it can sustain value creation separate andapart from value creation generated within the traditional models. Theysupply support for the premise that firms that effectively align theirorganizational efforts in this direction will increase their opportunities tocreate wealth above and beyond management of traditional physical assets.They cite authorities that indicate marketing’s new strategic role is affectedby a variety of changes in the business setting, including the emergence ofthe knowledge economy. The final paper by Michael Rich, ‘‘Are we losing trust throughtechnology?’’, addresses the potential loss of ethical behavior as companiesrely more on technology to track and identify marketing opportunities andless on personal contact. Several examples are offered of obvious unethicalbehavior that has been experienced in the marketplace in the last few yearsand then projects newly emerging potential unethical situations directlyrelated to technological advances. The links between ethical behavior andtrust are advanced, using new technology scenarios to reveal potentialpitfalls in maintaining trust with customers. The author suggests proactivemarketing activities to establish more firmly the role of marketing as aprotector of ethical behavior within the corporate framework.Reviewers for the special issueSiva Balasubramanian, Southern Illinois University at Carbondale;Joseph A. Bellizi, Arizona State University – West;Paul Dion, Susquehanna University;Steve Henson, University of New Orleans;Michael D. Hutt, Arizona State University;Peter F. Kaminski, Northern Illinois University;Roger A. Kerin, Southern Methodist University;Jeffrey E. Lewin, Western Carolina University;Ritu Lohtia, Georgia State University;Michael S. Minor, University of Texas – Pan American. Michael K. Rich Guest Editor Previously published in: Journal of BUSINESS & INDUSTRIAL MARKETING, Volume 17, Number 2/3, 2002