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Call for papers – Journal of Customer Behaviour

Special Issue on The Separate Worlds of Business and Consumer Marketing (Deadline for submissions 31 January 2012)

GUEST EDITORS:

Dr. Andrew Pressey, Senior Lecturer, Lancaster University Management School.

Dr. Nick Ellis, Reader, Durham University

We may all recall a time in our academic careers when, either through necessity or choice (and possibly even with some unease), we labelled ourselves ‘business’ or ‘consumer’ marketers. As scholars we craft identities and labels that we perceive communicate our identities to the broader academic community, while simultaneously binding us to our own disciplinary ‘tribe’. Thus we have endeavoured, either accidentally or purposefully, to delineate a B2B-B2C ‘divide’ within marketing scholarship. This bifurcation initially appeared well-founded: both sub-disciplines can point to early advocates for ‘special treatment’ (Lewis, 1935; Tucker, 1957), while some contemporary accounts hold that the two areas are still primarily different with clear lines of demarcation and points of divergence (Lichtenthal & Mummalaneni, 2009), or even that one area should take precedent over, or supersede, the other (Lichtenthal et al., 2006).

Although we recognize the usefulness that often lies in disciplinary labels, is, however, the evident divide between B2B and B2C research not only artificial but also potentially injurious to the advancement of marketing theory? Are we creating silos of knowledge and expertise that limit the cross-pollination of ideas, learning, and creativity? Are we in error in drawing such clear dividing lines between consumer and business marketing? Certainly, there are those who have questioned the validity in differentiating between business and consumer marketing (Fern & Brown, 1984; Wind, 2006; Cova & Salle, 2008) and the so-called ‘separate worlds’ of marketing scholarship in these areas (Wind, 2006, p.477). Concerns for this potentially ill-founded intra-disciplinary divide have been voiced in recent years:

"Although generations of researchers in marketing have talked about a more or less clear dividing line between B2C marketing and B2B marketing, inconvenient facts often throw doubt on this demarcation" (Cova & Salle, 2008, p.3);

"Are the current mental models we have for "business" versus "consumer" markets still useful?" (Wind, 2006, p.477);

"Many marketing experts distinguish between industrial marketing and consumer marketing. This distinction … is neither based in theory nor empirically supported. It establishes artificial intradisciplinary boundaries that hinder the development of marketing theory" (Fern & Brown, 1984, p.68).

Instances where there has been the cross-pollination of ideas between consumer and business marketing have proved illuminative. For example, reflecting on his work on organizational buying behaviour from the mid-1960s, Professor Yoram (Jerry) Wind recollects that both himself and colleagues in this period recognized that certain principles from the domain of consumer marketing could be successfully adapted and applied for use in a business-to-business context, while insights developed in business or industrial marketing could have relevance to a consumer marketing audience (Wind, 2006). It was the central basic question of how do entities make purchase decisions, that sparked the interest of marketing scholars particularly in the 1960s and 70s, and that led to similar understandings of buying roles and influences in both consumer and business marketing (Howard & Sheth, 1969; Robinson et al., 1967). The potential cross-pollination between consumer and business marketing has not been restricted to this period; concepts with one disciplinary ‘home’ have been successfully applied in a second area or context in order to provide useful insights (see, for example, Nataraajan & Angur, 1997).

Given the foregoing, the purpose and motivation for the special issue is to examine the consumer-business marketing dichotomy. For this special issue of JCB we particularly welcome both empirical and conceptual manuscripts focused on the consumer-business divide, including but not limited to:

• Studies that consider the potential artificiality of the intra-disciplinary boundary between consumer and business marketing;
• Insights from consumer or business marketing that may prove illuminative to their intradisciplinary counterparts;
• A (re)consideration of the boundary between consumer and business marketing;
• Examinations of contemporary business models that blur the boundaries between tradition business and consumer fields and tenets;
• Manuscripts from early career researchers – from either consumer or business marketing domains – that can demonstrate intra-disciplinary impact

SUBMISSIONS

The submission deadline for papers is 31st January 2012 for publication in the Winter 2012 issue.

Authors must refer to the Guidelines for Authors at the journal website

Submissions and queries should be directed to the Guest Editors by email to

Dr. Andrew Pressey, Senior Lecturer, Lancaster University Management School. a.pressey@lancaster.ac.uk

Dr. Nick Ellis, Reader, Durham University, n.t.ellis@durham.ac.uk

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