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With B2B (business‐to‐business) and new developments in marketing as the springboard, this paper seeks to emphasize complexity and context in marketing systems, embracing both B2B and B2C (business‐to‐consumer) marketing.

The approach takes the form of a conceptual analysis of new developments in marketing through network theory and case study research.

Recent theory points to a network and systems approach to marketing and to changing roles between suppliers and customers. Both many‐to‐many marketing as a broadening of relational approaches and the service dominant (S‐D) logic stress consumer involvement, exposing the customer's interactive role. The IBM service science programme enrols research and education in developing more functional service systems. The conventional divide in goods and services marketing is dissolved in favour of supplier‐customer interaction.

B2B and B2C are both part of complex contexts. Case study research and network theory allow complexity and context to come forward. Network theory should be applied in all marketing, and concepts in marketing need to be constantly evaluated as to validity and relevance. The conventional sectors (manufacturing, services, agriculture) are supplier‐centric whereas marketing prescribes customer centricity. By focusing on continuous theory generation better theory will replace previous theory.

Marketers overview the complexity of specific marketing situations, to systematically observe relational phenomena and the customer's role, and will be better able to foresee opportunities and avoid mistakes in marketing planning and execution.

The paper offers a network view which is little represented in research and education. With growing dependency on larger integrated systems such a coherent view becomes increasingly more urgent. In a new marketing logic of service and value creation, the reductionism, fragmentation and linearity of Western science are challenged in favour of a comprehensive network approach. B2B and B2C are treated as perspectives of a grander marketing context and not as independent categories, and the broadened role of customers in value networks is recognized. Goods and services can only be understood and handled in a unified context.

By outsourcing or partnering with two or more firms to perform certain activities targeted toward customers, firms are engaging in service networks. This research begins to examine how customers evaluate firms in a strategic, B2B service network and how their assessment of firms involved in co‐producing after‐sales service affects their evaluations of a focal selling firm. These evaluations include the key relational outcomes of brand image, satisfaction, and behavioral intentions.

The conceptual model examines the effects of partner firm performance on customers' evaluations of a focal selling firm. Key factors such as focal brand strength and the strength of the relationship between the partner firm and the focal selling firm are proposed to influence this relationship.

Post‐sale business services provided directly to the customer are likely to play an important role in building a firm's brand image and equity, whether those services are provided by the firm or its partners.

The individual firm to individual customer dyad approach that currently dominates the literature does not adequately capture the complex nature of today's B2B service relationships. This research develops a conceptual model that directly addresses the way customers evaluate service when it is performed by multiple partners.

Discovering how customers evaluate service experiences in which multiple firms co‐produce the service within a B2B service network can provide firms with the guidance needed to improve the performance of the entire network and the overall service experience of network customers.

This paper presents new theoretical developments in the area of business‐to‐business service networks. This research also addresses several gaps in the industrial marketing literature, particularly B2B services and branding.

Based on an organizational capability perspective, this paper aims to propose a development model for social media analytics (SMA) capability that can be applied to business-to-business (B2B) marketing, with the aim of facilitating the use and integration of SMA in B2B marketing and maximizing the benefits of business networks in the age of social media.

This is a critical interpretive synthesis of SMA publications collected from academic journals, business magazines and the SMA service industry. In addition, an inter-disciplinary approach was adopted by drawing upon both marketing and information systems literature. In total, 123 academic papers, 106 industry case studies and 141 magazine papers were identified and analyzed. The findings were synthesized and compiled to address the predefined research question.

An SMA capability development model is proposed. The proposed model consists of four inter-dependent levels (technological, operational, managed and strategic) that collectively transfer the technological capability of SMA to the dynamic organizational capability. Each level of SMA capability is detailed. SMA-in-B2B marketing is highlighted as a socio-technical phenomenon, in which a technological level SMA capability is emphasized as the foundation for developing organizational level SMA capabilities and organizational capabilities, in turn, supporting and managing SMA activities and practices (e.g. strategic planning, social and cultural changes, skills and resources, measurements and values).

The proposed research framework may have implications for the operational level SMA development and the investigations on the direct and/or indirect measurements to help firms see the impact of SMA on their business.

This study may have implications for the adoption, use, integration and management of SMA in B2B marketing. The proposed model is grounded on the integrated insights from academia and industry. It is particularly relevant to B2B firms that have engaged in or plan to engage in applying SMA to extract insights from their online networks and is relevant to B2B researchers who are interested in SMA, big data and information technology organization integration studies.

Digitalisation has increased the importance of online forms of marketing, including social media (SM) marketing, for entrepreneurial firms. This paper aims to identify digital engagement strategies and tactics in developing SM marketing capability.

The study uses ethnographic content analysis of an entrepreneurial firm and a network of business-to-business (B2B) actors to classify 1,248 B2B Facebook posts and Twitter tweets from a case of an artisan food producer in addition to semi-structured interviews with 26 networked actors.

The authors derive a range of digital engagement strategies (8 in total) and tactics (15 in total) for the four defining layers of SM marketing capability, namely, connect, engage, co-ordinate and collaborate.

This research focuses on a case study and a network of B2B actors within the artisan food sector. However, the strategies and tactics are applicable to other entrepreneurial firms and contexts.

The digital engagement strategies and tactics are of direct practical benefit to entrepreneurial firms willing to learn and develop SM marketing capability in interaction with their B2B partners.

This study investigates three under-researched areas, SM as it relates to B2B relationships, and entrepreneurship, and marketing capability gaps in an era of rapid digitalisation. The definition of SM marketing capability and associated digital engagement strategies and tactics are new to the extant literature moving forward the understanding of SM B2B marketing in theory and practice.

This paper aims to explore how born global firms (BGs) in business to business (B2B) markets balance the mix of physical and virtual networking through social media to gain access to resources throughout their internationalization process. Further, the research seeks to understand these firms’ network dynamics in their continual adaptation to changing resource requirements throughout the internationalization process.

This research adopts a multiple case study approach based on in-depth interviews with founders and key informants in BGs in the software industry, supplemented with extensive secondary data.

Results reveal that networking through social media is efficient and can be used to access vital resources and to build trusting relationships in a B2B context, yet in combination with physical networking. This research found several boundary conditions related to the mix of physical and virtual networking, i.e. the relationship culture in the industry, strategic importance of partner/customer, type of product complexity and managers’ perceptions of the usefulness of social media in a B2B context. These conditions could evolve over time.

This research contributes to enhanced understanding of how resource-constrained BGs balance the mix of physical and virtual networking through social media in a B2B context, influenced by boundary conditions, achieving a network dynamic to advance internationalization.

This paper aims to conceptualize corporate reference management as a strategic signaling activity in business networks. While research has extensively outlined how firms develop and maintain social capital through business-to-business (B2B) relationships, less is known about how they signal their participation in business networks to develop this social capital. Therefore, this paper conceptualizes B2B references, in particular corporate online references (COR), as a tool through which firms “borrow” attractiveness from their business network. Through the lens of structural social capital theory, COR is shown to capture advantages related to interconnectedness between firms.

The paper reports on a two-step qualitative and quantitative research design. First, the authors undertook a qualitative study that reports on the COR practices of senior business managers. A quantitative study then uses social network analysis (SNA) to audit a digital business network comprising 1,098 firms in a metropolitan area of the UK, referencing to each other through their corporate websites using COR.

The analyses find that COR practices contribute to building structural social capital in networks through strategic signaling. Firms do so by managing B2B references to craft strategic signals, using five steps: requesting, granting, curating, coding and decoding references. While the existing literature on business marketing portrays reference management as a routine and operational management practice, this investigation conceptualizes reference management, in particular COR, as a strategic activity.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study to use SNA to represent B2B references in the form of COR as a network, which overlaps with (but is not entirely identical to) the business network. Further, the study re-conceptualizes reference management as a strategic signaling activity that leverages the firm’s participation in business networks to build structural social capital by borrowing attractiveness of prestigious business partners that leverages existing structural social capital. Finally, the paper coins and conceptualizes COR as an exemplar of referencing management and offers propositions for further research.

The Internet and its commercial applications in electronic commerce, particularly new ventures like B2B e‐markets, are experiencing a volatile introduction to the business environment. Businesses are restructuring and forming networks in an effort to accommodate and use this new phenomenon to their advantage. From this perspective, this article offers a conceptual framework on the process of creating these new ventures, the impact of network champions in the creation process and the strategic significance of the competency‐destroying innovation (Internet) for buyers and sellers who join the B2B e‐market. Several working propositions are developed from the extant literature that should be useful for empirical work on how new B2B e‐markets are implemented. The paper presents a refined proposition based on a field study of a B2B e‐market case.

This study examines the potential of foreign business-to-business (B2B) firms to select high-status local partners in emerging markets to achieve positive relationship outcomes. Because a domestic firm’s high status may also promote opportunism, the study also examines if the foreign B2B firms may mitigate such behavior through either or both transaction-specific investments (TSIs) and socialization.

The research is conducted via a model that suggests a positive correlation between high local partner status and the focal relationship outcomes and the moderating effects of structural TSIs and social governance systems. The model was developed and empirically tested using data collected from 96 foreign firms operating in China.

Using multiple regressions, the findings suggest that foreign B2B firms are likely to achieve more beneficial relationship outcomes with high-status local partners. Standing alone, foreign B2B firms’ TSIs mitigate the positive relationship outcomes, whereas their socialization with the high-status partners enhances the beneficial outcomes. Most importantly, combining socialization with TSIs increases beneficial outcomes.

This study adds to B2B marketing, status theory and the application of transaction cost economics (TCE) and social exchange theory to foreign-local B2B exchange relationships in emerging markets. The findings confirm the attractiveness of high status in emerging markets by exploring how the selection, formation and chosen B2B governance processes may lead to competing outcomes of opportunism or success. Future research will benefit from simultaneously securing data from both sides of the dyad.

The paper suggests that foreign B2B firms consider high status as a key criterion in selecting local partners in emerging markets and the importance of managing high-status partners’ potential opportunism by effective governance mechanisms.

This study is one of the first to apply and explore the workings of status theory in the foreign-local B2B partner selection process and relationship outcomes in emerging markets and thereby contributes to B2B marketing, status theory and both TCE and social exchange theories in the focal foreign-local B2B context.

Over the last five decades, business to business (B2B) marketing has evolved from a transactional model to a behavioral model. This evolution is a consequence of the rise in thoughts of managing customer journeys, services marketing and acknowledging value co-creation amongst stakeholders. The contemporary B2B marketing strategies of relationship, innovation, sustainability and digital marketing that emerge through the literature review are discussed to demonstrate how they add value to the competitive advantage of firms and facilitate co-creation between business partners to help design the customer journey. The purpose of the paper is to discuss how the apparel industry could implement the B2B marketing strategies highlighted and further suggests a framework of value co-creation. The framework shows the journey between business partners followed by the value propositions as service exchange through resource integration within the service ecosystem.

Through a review of the literature, the evolution of B2B marketing unveils the importance of services marketing and how the marketing strategies discussed add value to the services marketing, this is further explored with propositions of value co-creation between business partners. The propositions are based on the theory of service dominant logic, whereby, the partners in the service ecosystem co-create value from value propositions offered by the business partners in collaboration with supply chain innovation.

A framework is suggested in the context of the apparel industry that demonstrates the value propositions as a part of the B2B marketing strategy. Through resource integration and collaboration between the business partners, the value propositions in the form of services, are exchanged resulting in value co-creation that leads to the ultimate offering to the end customer.

The service dominant logic theory and the supply chain innovation model are the basis of the framework, showing the value propositions made, are in collaboration between the firm and the supply chain partners. The value propositions in the form of services are exchanged as an outcome of resource integration amongst the business partners resulting in value co-creation which will aid apparel manufacturers differentiate their services and manage customer journeys better. The framework will be further researched through primary research to determine its rationality in the real-world context. The nature of the industry being fast paced, the literature will be outdated in a short span of time and with the vast growth, new strategies will need to be executed eventually.

The paper discusses how the apparel industry can move forward with the B2B marketing strategies highlighted through the literature review and further suggests a framework of value co-creation. This will aid apparel manufacturers to focus their marketing efforts in an era of services marketing and compete better globally with service offerings.

The competitive advantage strategies and other key emerging themes of co-creation, value co-creation and customer journeys are highlighted and shows increasing importance to the survival of businesses in an era of service orientation and relationship marketing.

Through a critical literature review of B2B marketing strategies and with the use of theoretical models of service dominant logic and supply chain innovation, the conceptual paper proposes a framework by the authors that allows future research to analyse value co-creation in B2B marketing strategies for the apparel industry.

The purpose of this paper is to extend existing theories of b2b networks over non‐profit networks.

The paper sheds light on the network organisational forms recently implanted in the academic community. the analytic induction method is used to extend b2b network concepts to a non‐profit context. The concepts of b2b networks are critically analysed and applied to explorative case studies of networks in academia. The paradox of open knowledge exchange in these networks is revealed and an attempt is made to elucidate it.

B2b network concepts should be modified before being extended to non‐profits. Propositions are suggested to adapt b2b network concepts to explain non‐profit networks. Questions to address in further research are developed.

The main conclusions are only applicable to specific types of networks. Only academic networks are reviewed. The case study approach does not allow for generalizing the findings and deriving a set of concepts for non‐profit networks, and thus, calls for further research.

There may be space for achieving excellence in research by facilitating interpersonal rather than interorganisational research networks. This is important, since by facilitating interpersonal networks one can escape from organisational bureaucracy.

The study reports networking between the non‐profits, an issue largely neglected by marketing researchers, and contributes to its understanding in the frame of existing b2b network concepts.