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Artur Baldauf and Jakki Mohr have the honor to serve as co-chairs for the B-t-B track for the 2008 AMS annual conference to be held in one of the most exciting and beautiful cities of the world: Vancouver May 28-31. In keeping with the theme of the conference “Creating Value in a Global Marketplace”, our goal is to motivate scholars from all over the world to contribute to the success of the conference through submitting their research. Value Creation is of utmost importance for firms operating in a B-t-B setting, and hence, we are personally inviting you to submit a competitive paper and/or special session proposal to us by November 14, 2007.

Considering the current developments in the marketplace and within firms, Artur and I have identified numerous important issues and specific topics in areas. If you were conducting research in such areas – which however, by no means should signal that other areas were not of interest – we would especially encourage you to submit papers and special session proposals. Below we do provide some ideas and potential research questions in research areas. Addressing such topics seem to be very important to identify, create, measure and deliver (manage) customer value in business markets.

Customer Value

• How to conceptualize value in b-t-b setting (What does value mean and value for whom)?
• What are the critical dimensions of value?
• What are meaningful approaches to measure customer value?
• How is “value” related to other constructs in a nomological net?

Relationships

• What are necessary conditions to achieve relationship success in the long-run?
• To what extent are human and social contacts (networks) influence value and competitive advantage?
• Are there situations where CRM is more or less meaningful?
• Do firms in different industries and/or serving distinct customers need to focus on different aspects of a relationship quality?

Strategic Issues

• Do firms need to pursue specific strategies for creating and/or delivering value for their customer bases?
• What is the relationship between a firm’s cultural orientations (e.g., market orientation, learning, entrepreneurial orientation, absorptive capacity) and the value provided?
• What methods should be meaningfully used to assess/forecast market boundaries?
• What strategies need to be pursued with different value dimensions?

Marketing-Mix Issues

• What are the value drivers in new product development?
• What metrics are meaningful to asses the cost-benefit issues in new product developments?
• What is the role of branding (e.g., brand equity) and/or country of origin in value creation?
• What is the role of channel partners (from the inbound and outbound perspective) in value creation?
• What are major challenges of networks in value creation?
• What are necessary conditions for establishing an effective integrated marketing-mix program?

Business Research and Technology Use/Adoption

• What are effective and efficient research methods to study business markets (e.g., value created for a firm’s stakeholders?
• Can relying on best practices or benchmarking approaches enhance value?
• What are appropriate marketing models for researching b-t-b markets?
• What is the role of IT (e.g., capabilities) in b-t-b markets?

Knowing that for many of the above indicated research questions, no universal answers might exist, we especially would like to see research focusing on cross-country (cultural) issue applying contingency and/or configuration approaches.

We hope that some of our research questions fall within your specific expertise and/or current research efforts. We are sincerely committed to putting together a compelling b-t-b track and having an outstanding group of presenters at the conference. Again, please do not forget the submission deadline: November 14, 2007. For any questions, please feel free to contact either of us and please consult the web-site to obtain further information – call-for-papers at . Our track description is included below.

The many outstanding attractions of Vancouver and the surrounding vicinity are described at the Tourism Vancouver website located at:

We are looking forward to receiving your best research,

Jakki & Artur

Business-to-Business Marketing

This track invites papers and special session proposals that focus on all aspects of business-to-business marketing, relationship marketing, and organizational buying behavior. Both conceptual and empirical research papers are welcome, especially those that focus on the current and future challenges facing business marketers both domestically and globally and on the role of relationship marketing in exchange performance. Suggested topics include CRM strategies; relationship development, execution, and termination; creating and delivering value; emerging technologies; sole sourcing; outsourcing; and more. Submit manuscripts and special session proposals by e-mail attachment no later than November 14, 2007 to:

Jakki Mohr
School of Business Administration
University of Montana
Missoula, MT 59812
Phone: (406)243-2920
Email: Jakki.Mohr@business.umt.edu

Artur Baldauf
Department of Management
Institute of Marketing & Management
Engehaldenstrasse 4
CH – 3012 Bern, Switzerland
Phone: + 41 31 631 53 31
Email: Baldauf@imu.unibe.ch

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