Guest editorial

Citation

(2011), "Guest editorial", Journal of Business & Industrial Marketing, Vol. 26 No. 3. https://doi.org/10.1108/jbim.2011.08026caa.001

Guest editorial

Article Type: Guest editorial From: Journal of Business & Industrial Marketing, Volume 26, Issue 3

This special edition of the Journal of Business & Industrial Marketing follows the tradition of periodically publishing a special edition featuring papers from participants attending the annual CBIM Academic Workshop. The theme of the February 2008 workshop held in Tampa, Florida, was “Innovating B2B marketing: processes, coordination and value”. This special issue features seven papers from the CBIM 2008 Workshop. The papers selected for this special issue are a cross-section of those presented at the workshops.

The first article in the special issue is by Yang, Alejandro and Boles, a conceptual paper titled, “The role of social capital and knowledge transfer in selling center performance”. The paper develops a theoretical model of selling center performance underpinned from the social capital and teams literatures. The model links organizational and interpersonal relationships to key “hard” (financial and quality criteria), as well as the “soft” (social and affective) elements of performance. Internal social capital is theorized to influence knowledge transfer and knowledge absorption. Knowledge absorption in turn moderates the effectiveness of knowledge transfer by increasing overall performance. External social capital is predicted to have a more direct effect on overall performance as it represents bond which increase the overall performance.

The second article by Kenning, Grzeskowiak, Brock and Ahlert, “The role of wholesale brands for buyer loyalty: a transaction cost perspective”, looks at a growing area of business to business brands, in particular the wholesaler brand. The study of 569 buyers finds that wholesaler brand knowledge effectively reduces ex-post transaction costs (quality control and price verification) but not search costs incurred by the buyer. These costs reduce loyalty but the ”shadow” of the brand knowledge, works in favor of the wholesaler with regard to loyalty. The study provides a starting point to investigate additional conditions which may influence the effectiveness of wholesaler brand knowledge and the salience of the brand in the channel members’ selection and relationship.

In their review paper “Assessing competitive advantage of emerging markets in knowledge intensive business services” authors Javalgi, Gross, Joseph and Granot discuss the literature pertaining to the scope of knowledge-intensive business services (KIBS) in emerging markets. Their analysis of secondary data shows that major emerging markets are building competitive advantage by focusing on KIBS with differing degrees of progress. The BRICs, China, India, Russia and Brazil lead, in that respective order, in their advancement of these services. This review provides implications and guidance for research into global business-to-business capabilities while also being useful for policy development regarding support of infrastructure to support these new sectors.

The fourth paper, “Managing industrial service offerings in global business markets”, by Kowalkowski, Kindström and Brehmer, focuses on industrial services in the global marketplace. The case study method of two multinational manufacturing firms investigates eight different industrial service offerings and reports how these firms develop and manage their industrial service offerings. Their findings from the case studies suggest that firms with broad service offerings require a wide range of skill sets along with capabilities for local responsiveness while maintaining global scale efficiencies. Those firms with more specialized and extensive service offerings tend to internalize the service component and have a high level of central-local control and product-service integration.

In the paper by Asare, Alejandro, Granot and Kashyap, “The role of channel orientation in B2B technology adoption”, the authors use a qualitative approach to explore the underlying factors taken into consideration in the adoption of B2B technologies. Their iterative methodology uncovers various orientations that frame the respondent firms’ decision making. Those orienations are: transactional, demand driven, and the extended enterprise view. Each orientation is based on how firms respond as well as their attitudes towards B2B technology adoption.

Brown, Sichtmann, and Musante present a conceptual paper, “A model of product-to-service brand extension success factors in B2B buying contexts”, which develops a model of the predictors of success for B2B brand extensions from products to services. The model draws on elements of organizational buying behavior, branding, and service-dominant logic perspective to develop various propositions. They propose that product-to-service brand extensions will be more successful if a firm has a strong brand reputation, relevant service competencies, and strong buyer–seller relationships. The level of shared innovativeness, along with transaction utilities and efficiencies support a more positive product-service brand extension.

The final paper of the special issue, Wendelin presents a methodology for conducting an audit of interfirm bonds in “Bond audit, a method for evaluating business relationships”. Qualitative interviews were conducted and various forms of bonds were evaluated at a lower level of abstraction level in order to classify and analyze the strength of the different types of bonds. The findings are based on 14 case studies in seven different industries and the analysis used a method of systematic combining based on the abductive approach for analyzing and improving business relationships.. The case studies show that bonds are important relationship regulators and the bond audit results are useful for focusing on those bonds that could strengthen business relationship.

Special thanks go to the following people: Debi McPartlan for her assistance in organizing the CBIM Workshop, the participants who came from 15 countries, Wesley Johnston the CBIM Executive Director, and finally, the various reviewers for making this special issue possible.