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This paper aims to investigate how the COVID-19 pandemic has affected the interaction in a business-to-business (BtoB) setting and the emerging relational dynamics. The COVID-19 pandemic is having a strong impact on BtoB markets in terms of the stop of production, the difficulty of coping with payments, restrictions on the flows of people and goods within national and international markets. The paper discusses that the effects of worldwide lockdowns, social distancing and other related restrictions undermine one of the salient features of business relationships, namely interaction.

The paper relies on a qualitative interpretivist approach based on the data collected from in-depth interviews with key informants and secondary sources. The fashion industry is taken as an emblematic case, given the relevance of BtoB relationships, especially those between global fashion brands and their suppliers, and the dramatic impact of the pandemic.

The paper shows four effects in terms of relational dynamics. The freezing effect is the maintaining of interaction at minimum operating levels capable of ensuring survival for both interacting actors. The ripple effect can be conceived as a negative effect of the pandemic related to the weakening of the freezing effects in interactions along the supply chain. The rebound effect is a sudden increase in interactive processes among existing relationships. The vicious effect is a negative effect of the pandemic on the interaction that refers to the decay of existing interaction and their ending.

This study fits into the current period of the COVID-19 pandemic to stress the role of interaction involving people and businesses as a key to restart. The paper suggests managerial implications to respond to the pandemic in the short term and to set the basis for future opportunities.

The purpose of this paper is to study the role of the actors (especially firms) in interactions between contexts defined as “innovation ecosystems.”

The paper presents a conceptual framework. A review of the literature to frame the concepts of innovation ecosystems and the Industrial Marketing and Purchasing (IMP) approach is presented. A possible integration of the two concepts is then discussed.

The paper adds new discursive inputs to the concept of innovation ecosystem that validate its use in the context of the knowledge economy and extends the theories of knowledge, by analyzing the role that various actors who populate an innovative ecosystem play in the creation, learning, use, and dissemination of knowledge.

The paper furnishes an approach to the research on knowledge management and innovation, in the attempt to relate the IMP Group approach with the perspective of the “innovation ecosystems” concept.

This paper aims to deal with the issue of business model change in industrial markets. It considers the fast-fashion supply chain by addressing the following research questions: What are the paths of change of the supplier’s business model to match the business model of fast fashion customers? How can a supplier’s business model be adapted to customer’s requirements in these paths of change?

Empirically, the paper presents a multiple case study of 10 semi-finished textile suppliers, carried out through a long-term research programme in the Italian textile industrial district of Prato.

The multiple-case study shows some key drivers of change in the suppliers’ business models. Three main paths emerged from the interactions with fast fashion clients. Paradoxes in the supplier’s business model changes are identified and discussed.

The paper proposes implications for suppliers interacting with fast fashion clients and discusses how the adaptation of business models may be interpreted. This study points out how matching the business model of the customers does not call for alignment of similar features.

The paper deals with an understudied topic within the literature: business models change in business to business markets, taking into consideration the perspective of the supplier. It considers buyers-seller relationships in industrial supply chains as being part of a chain of business models and the need for the supplier’s business model to adapt and match one of the clients. The paper proposes two potential interpretations of such adaptation.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate pharmaceutical market access (MA) and the interaction between the pharmaceutical company and other business and non-business actors (NBAs) involved in the MA of ethical drugs, to identify the main categories of actors, their role for MA and the content of the interaction, adopting an industrial marketing approach.

A qualitative interpretivist approach is adopted, with interviews as the primary data collection method: 36 interviews have been conducted with 16 key informants from the pharmaceutical industry.

The findings of this study reveal that (i) MA can be seen as a relational-driven activity with specific features owing to the highly regulated nature of the pharmaceutical industry, (ii) there is a multiplicity of business, and NBAs involved in the MA activities with whom pharmaceutical companies interact to acquire knowledge, legitimacy and make MA timely and effective, and (iii) the interaction with each category of actors has specific content.

This paper advances the debate on the marketing and management of pharmaceutical companies by emphasizing the importance of MA and the need to conceptualize it according to an industrial marketing perspective, revealing the interdependencies among actors for MA and the content of the interaction. It also contributes to the industrial marketing literature that has recently stressed the importance of NBAs as part of the extended business network of a company by identifying different categories of actors, their role in terms of knowledge and legitimization and the features and the trade-off of the extended business network in highly regulated markets.

This paper aims to investigate the market access (MA) of ethical drugs, the underlying public-private interaction (PPI) between pharmaceutical companies and public actors, and the implications for the sustainability of the health system.

A qualitative interpretivist approach was selected. Interviews were carried out as the primary method of data collection: 27 interviews were conducted with 13 key informants from the pharmaceutical industry.

The perspective of MA evolves from formal negotiation with the public actor at various levels to PPI, which should include aspects of interactions with other actors in the network. Conceptualization in these terms is fundamental because it allows an understanding of the implications in terms of the sustainability of the health system.

The paper discusses MA by highlighting the shift from a “market access as formal negotiation” perspective to a “public-private interaction for market access” perspective, in which the focus is on the content of the interaction and the representation of the network of relevant actors for MA. It contributes to the debate on the sustainability of health systems by suggesting the adoption of a medium-to-long-term approach to economic and social sustainability based on PPI; it adopts an industrial marketing approach and contributes to the recent debate on PPI.

This article investigates the integration between online and offline channels in the internationalization of top luxury fashion brands. It aims at pointing out the main drivers of such integration, comparing the top international markets for the luxury goods sector.

The empirical investigation regards an analysis on secondary data of eight top luxury players in the fashion industry and 12 top international markets for the luxury goods sector.

This study shows that the integration between physical and online channels is driven by the market rather than by the company strategies. Moreover, it points out that the e-commerce presence of luxury brands is stronger in developed markets, while in emerging markets it is less pronounced. Moreover, the integration between channels is mainly achieved through logistic rather than technological tools.

This research has major implications. From the perspectives of luxury brands in the fashion industry, it points out the main drivers for integration between online and offline channels and the main differences among international markets.

This research deliver insights for marketers interested in benchmarking with top leading luxury brand in fashion and to define e-commerce internationalization policies.

The originality of the article regards the joint consideration of two emerging issues for luxury players, e-commerce internationalization and omnichannel strategies.

This paper deals with the international expansion of manufacturing small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) through the opening of retail outlets in foreign countries. The paper develops and discusses five research questions.

The paper discusses emerging data from the analysis of a database set up in recent years. In particular, it deals with 1,419 retail operations regarding 246 Italian fashion brands in 77 foreign markets during the period from 2005 and 2010.

The paper points out that retail operations are largely used by Italian fashion SMEs to internationalize. This form of entry in foreign markets is used to develop in both mature and emerging markets and it seems related to the brand potential of Italian fashion SMEs abroad.

The paper is limited to the case of Italian fashion brands and to the period 2005–2010.

The paper considers an unexplored area of the internationalization theory of SMEs, that of the development abroad through retail store openings. The paper offers insights on the extent to what this strategy is used by Italian fashion brands.

This paper deals with the international development of firms through the online sales channel. Despite the ever-growing importance of the issues involved in such internationalization strategies, they have received limited attention in the literature.

The paper presents an analysis of an expressly developed database of 20 multibrand luxury retailers in the online fashion market

The analysis highlights the international dimension of these players and sheds some light on internationalization through e-commerce of the luxury fashion retailers. In particular, the paper states that e-commerce may be related to different degrees of internationalization in multibrand luxury fashion retailers and that internationalization of multibrand luxury fashion retailers through e-commerce is unrelated to physical stores abroad.

Future research should be aimed at analyzing the characteristics of a greater number of actor, such as mono-brand luxury manufacturers, also comparing the fashion system with other sectors where the online channel exhibits a similar important trend.

The paper’s originality is related to a new phenomenon that has yet to receive appropriate consideration in the literature, the online international company growth with particular focus on the online channel as a new means to develop into foreign markets

This paper aims to study the role of the focal firm in local communities. In particular, it aims at analyzing such firms’ contribution to innovation, proposing a classification of the interactions and role systems that contribute to determining the innovational impact of focal firms.

This paper presents a concept-based study. The paper starts with a review of the literature to frame the concepts of local network and focal firm. Two key concepts, related to that of interaction, are then discussed: teaching and learning.

The paper proposes a taxonomy of the interactions and the roles systems that the focal firm can establish. The status of focal actor for innovation in a network stems, not from an “a priori” central strategic role on which the actor builds its interactions, but “a posteriori”, from the actor’s previously recognized roles in interactions on which network innovation is based. The local system may or may not be present in the interaction set of the business network. The interactions and roles systems define the type of local system.

Research implications regard three main aspects: the different roles in the interactions; the types of actors in the local system; and the types of local systems involved in the processes of innovation.

The paper furnishes an original interpretation by focusing on focal firms as leaders in the innovation process, in the attempt to reconcile the “macro” perspective of local systems with the “micro” perspective of the individual firm.