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Industrial Marketing Management Special Issue on Value in Business and Industrial Marketing

Deadline December 31, 2010

Industrial Marketing Management announces the call for papers for a special issue on value in business and industrial marketing. The deadline for submission is December 31, 2010.

Purpose of the special issue

In business and industrial marketing, upstream and downstream alike, the creation of value is paramount to any company’s survival (Kotler and Keller, 2008), and even more so at a time where dramatic changes in business and industrial marketing’s context are leading to fundamental changes in what companies should be analyzing, creating, and delivering (Doyle, 2000; Hunt, 2000).

Despite the considerable amount of literature on the topic, there is a general feeling among academics and practitioners that we have only just begun to understand what is meant by ‘value’ (Anderson & Narus, 1998). Many different angles of value have been investigated. Two more or less distinct research streams are identified in literature (Lindgreen & Wynstra, 2005): one focusing on the value of the object of exchange (goods and services) and one focusing on the value of the process of exchange (the relationships, networks, and interactions that the company is embedded in). However, holes remain to be filled, and new fields need to be explored.

The overall objective of the special issue is to provide a comprehensive collection of cutting-edge theories and research on ‘value’ as analyzed, created, and delivered by business and industrial marketing companies and as perceived and experienced by their customers, suppliers, and other important stakeholders (cf. Arnould & Price, 1993; Csikszentmihalyi, 1990; Holbrook & Hirschman, 1982; Lindgreen et al., 2009). When these themes (i.e., analysis, creation, delivery, and experience) are crossed with the ‘goods and services’ and ‘relationships, networks, and interactions’ themes, eight potential areas for future research are obtained. On that basis, specific topics may include, but are not limited to the following:

• The interaction of customers’ value appraisals and suppliers’ value propositions; and how this interaction triggers the development of new goods or services.
• The biases, if any, of different business functions in what the company needs to analyze, create, and deliver in terms of product offerings.
• The qualities of relationships and interactions vis-à-vis different relationship phases.
• The interaction processes, and interfaces, between suppliers and customers in terms of creating and delivering different types of business services.
• The critical supplier and customer capabilities in developing new or improved services and managing the supplier-customer interaction.
• The contribution of value to developing and maintaining business-to-business relationships.
• The value outcomes (purchasing, marketing, performance) of different marketing and purchasing orientations.
• The contribution of intrafirm coordination (of various business functions) and interfirm co-ordination (between the company and various stakeholders) to value; and how value is delivered through said co-ordinations.
• The involvement of supplier and customer in co-creation of value.
• The value proposition and how it develops along the product life cycle.
• The value of corporate responsibility and sustainability in a business-to-business context.
• The extent to which value in, and of, experiential marketing developed in business-to-consumer markets is transferable to business-to-business markets.
• The role of viral marketing / word-of-marketing in value creation and delivery.
• The ideal portfolio configuration in terms of services and products as categories and also service and product as strategies for designing market offerings that are of value to customers.
• The importance of processes in designing new industrial service offerings that customers are really willing to pay for.
• The successful versus unsuccessful de-commoditization initiatives and transition paths to facilitate the introduction of extra service-based value to the business offering
• The costs and benefits of customer relationship management initiatives that require the cooperation of multiple functions within a company.
• The analysis, creation, and delivery of value in a local versus global context.
• The dynamics of different business nets.
• The value of leadership in creating and delivering value offerings / value solutions.
• The different components of absorptive capacity in relation to each other and to the construct of value innovation.
• Cases of value success—and failures.
• Value analysis, creation, and delivery in particular industry sectors.

We will give preference to empirical papers—both qualitative and quantitative—although theoretical papers that examine fundamental issues in, or offer comprehensive frameworks of, value in business and industrial marketing also are welcomed. As Industrial Marketing Management is widely read by an academic and business audience, all submissions should include implications for practitioners.

References

Anderson, J.C. & Narus, J.A. (1998), “Business marketing: understand what customers value”, Harvard Business Review 76(6): 53-65.

Arnould, E.J. & Price, L.L. (1993), “River magic: extraordinary experience and the extended service encounter”, Journal of Consumer Research 20(June): 24-45.

Csikszentmihalyi, M. (1990), Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience, Harper & Row, New York, NY.

Doyle, P. (2000), Value-Based Marketing: Marketing Strategies for Corporate Growth and Shareholder Value, John Wiley & Sons, Chichester.

Holbrook, M.B. & Hirschman, E. (1982), “The experiential aspects of consumption: consumer fantasies, feelings, and fun”, Journal of Consumer Research, 9(September): 132-140.

Hunt, S. D. (2000), A General Theory of Competition, Sage Publications, Thousand Oaks, CA.

Kotler P. & Keller K.L. (2008), Marketing Management, 13th international edition, Prentice Hall, London.

Lindgreen, A., Vanhamme, J., & Beverland, M.B. (Eds.) (2009), Memorable Customer Experiences: A Research Anthology, Gower Publishing, Aldershot.

Lindgreen, A. & Wynstra, F. (2005), “Value in business markets: What do we know? Where are we going?” Industrial Marketing Management 34(7): 732-748.

Paper submission and review process

Papers submitted must not have been published, accepted for publication, or presently be under consideration for publication elsewhere. Submissions should be no more than 7,500 words in length. Copies should be submitted via email MS Word attachment (in one file including all figures and tables) to the guest editor as well as the IMM office (plaplaca@journalimm.com ; please indicate the paper is for the special issue of value in business and industrial marketing). The first page must contain the title of the paper and the names and contact details of all authors. For additional guidelines, see “Notes for Contributors” from a recent issue of Industrial Marketing Management, or visit http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/journaldescription.cws_home/505720/authorinstructions. Papers not complying with the notes for contributors or poorly written will be desk rejected. Suitable articles will be subjected to a double-blind review; hence, authors must not identify themselves in the body of their paper. (Please do not submit a Word file with “track changes” active or a PDF file.)

Please address all questions to the guest editor:

Professor Adam Lindgreen
Department of Marketing
University of Birmingham
Edgbaston
Birmingham B15 2TT
United Kingdom
Email: Adam_Lindgreen@hotmail.com

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