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This chapter documents the contributions in the business-to-business (B2B) marketing–buying literature that focus on implemented strategies in specific contexts. Research on implemented strategies often includes thick descriptions of how things actually get done over a period of weeks, months, or years including how decision makers make sense of situations, go about processing information, make choices, interact with other decision makers, participate in specific actions, and interpret events and outcomes. Research on implemented strategies favors “direct research” (Mintzberg, 1979) that includes multiple face-to-face interviews of the same and different participants in B2B processes over the course of days, week, months, or years. Direct research is inherently inductive theory-building and case-based data driven in its theory-empirical approach. Direct research includes applying a number of possible research methods and results in a number of advances in B2B implemented-strategy-in-context theory.

This study aims to explore what characteristics contribute to the definition of relevance in business-to-business (B2B) marketing research and how/why different strands of B2B marketing maintain or lose their relevance.

This study is conceptual. It adopts a performative-phenomenal standpoint for B2B marketing research and approaches relevance through the concept of episteme, which is considered pivotal for understanding this phenomenon.

This study proposes four axioms that define the characteristics of relevance in B2B marketing research and discusses their implications for scholars and practitioners. Consequently, an action plan for revitalizing B2B marketing research is developed, comprising learning and temporal dimensions, resulting in nine different relevance types.

The central argument put forward in this study is that different research strands of B2B marketing have deeply rooted epistemic underpinnings that influence their interpretation of relevance. Consequently, fostering dialogue between practitioners and scholars is considered necessary to sustain relevance in B2B marketing research. B2B scholars are urged to think beyond their subspecialized silos and acknowledge how the business environment and the various strands of B2B marketing congruently shape B2B marketing relevance, while also embracing research methods that bring them closer to business practice.

Marketing practitioners and academics continue to drift apart. This study puts forward three recommendations to bring marketing academics and practitioners closer together.

The study contributes to the B2B marketing literature by grappling with the theory-praxis gap and critically exploring what constitutes relevance in B2B marketing research.

The purpose of this study is to examine how and to what extent customer-provider service touchpoints impact business customer perceptions and outcomes in the context of long-term business-to-business (B2B) service relationships. To this end, the authors will assess the chain of effect path for different service touchpoints between business customers and service providers – and the long-term impact both on customer perceptions and financial, behavioral and relational outcomes.

Enabled by a five-year panel data set, seemingly unrelated regression model methodology is applied to test the proposed conceptual framework. Data are obtained for a sample of 2,175 B2B insurance service companies between 2013 and 2017.

Study results shed light on the significance of the sales force in B2B settings, as one of several key service touchpoints – together with firm expertise, service reliability and excellence – driving robust relationships, profitability and cross-buying. Firm-initiated contacts and tangible touchpoints are proven to be ineffective – even damaging in some instances – in terms of driving business customer perceptions.

The paper delivers empirical evidence providing insight on how service touchpoints and business customer perceptions have a long-term impact on customer outcomes. This has yet to be addressed in B2B service settings – despite being of vital interest to marketers, as the longitudinal approach of the research aids service firms in gaining a better understanding of company-customer touchpoints and the extent to which different factors have a decisive, lasting impact on B2B customer outcomes.

This chapter points out that the use of a wide range of theoretical paradigms in marketing research requires researchers to use a broad range of methodologies. As an aid in doing so, the chapter argues for the use of case study research (CSR), defines CSR, and describes several CSR theories and methods that are useful for describing, explaining, and forecasting processes occurring in business-to-business (B2B) contexts. The discussion includes summaries of six B2B case studies spanning more than 60 years of research. This chapter advocates embracing the view that learning and reporting objective realities of B2B processes is possible using CSR methods. CSR methods in the chapter include using multiple interviews (2 + ) separately of multiple persons participating in B2B processes, direct research and participant observation, decision systems analysis, degrees-of-freedom analysis, ethnographic-decision-tree-modeling, content analysis, and fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fs/QCA.com). The discussion advocates rejecting the dominant logic of attempting to describe and explain B2B processes by arms-length fixed-point surveys that usually involve responses from one executive per firm with no data-matching of firms in specific B2B relationships – such surveys lack details and accuracy necessary for understanding, describing, and forecasting B2B processes.

The purpose of this study is to review and analyze the status of word-of-mouth (WOM) research in the business-to-business (B2B) context and discuss and identify new possible future directions.

A systematic review was conducted and 36 articles on B2B WOM were collected to evaluate the current state of the literature and clarify possible future research directions.

This thematic analysis categorize these articles into three themes: WOM generation, WOM usage and reference marketing. Under each theme, the authors reveal research findings unique to B2B research and different from business-to-consumer (B2C) WOM research. This study identifies several research questions that should be addressed by future research.

Both academic researchers and business practitioners recognize that WOM plays an essential role in B2B marketing. However, no review paper focuses on WOM in the B2B context. Findings in the B2C WOM literature suggest that WOM substantially influences firms’ performance, but that managers cannot simply attempt to extrapolate B2C findings to the B2B arena. By synthesizing and assessing prior research on WOM in the B2B context, this study contributes to a better understanding of the B2B WOM phenomenon and facilitates future research on this topic.

The unprecedented changes in the marketplace induced by the COVID-19 pandemic and the resultant accelerated corporate migration to virtual ecosystems have added several unique research opportunities and theoretical gaps, especially in business-to-business (B2B) small- and medium-sized enterprises (SME) markets in the service sector. Particularly, customer interactions in B2B services that were once sustained by the “people mix” now demand a huge overhaul in light of the “new normal” restrictions. Hence, the purpose of this study is to explore how B2B service firms can engender firm value through virtual customer interactions during and in the post-COVID-19 era from an SME’s perspective.

This study adopts an exploratory qualitative inquiry to contribute to this discourse by proposing a conceptual framework based on prior literature and relevant theoretical frameworks, as well as qualitative interviews with SME managers, CEOs and/or owner-managers.

The qualitative findings reveal organizational preparedness, empathy, digital content and trust as key enablers of effective B2B virtual interaction that enhances cocreated value, thereby augmenting firm value. This study offers a much-needed examination of virtual interaction in B2B contexts and proposes a business customer virtual interaction model.

The exploratory nature of this study is one limitation, and future studies with a bigger representative sample size that uses survey or experimental data drawn from large enterprises might add value to the current findings. Also, while this study is conducted in dynamic markets due to the COVID-19 crisis, future research must examine the customer/firm’s experiences in other forms of crises-led market ecosystems.

B2B service firms must be strongly inclined to continuously take steps to develop and maintain virtual interaction with customers. Proactive efforts to familiarize internal and external stakeholders with virtual interaction platforms are a crucial step for effective customer engagement. The effectiveness of B2B virtual interactions can be strengthened through digital content that elicits trust and exhibits empathy, especially in crises led-markets. Also, the value created for the firm must be redeployed strategically to sustain positive customer engagement behaviors that continue to deliver value to the firm and the customer.

This paper contributes to the increasing B2B customer engagement literature by exploring the ongoing dialogue on how B2B firms can strive and succeed in the post-COVID-19 era or related crises-led market ecosystems through enhanced virtual B2B customer interaction efforts.

Artificial neural network (ANN) models, part of the discipline of machine learning and artificial intelligence, are becoming more popular in the marketing literature and in marketing practice. This paper aims to provide a series of tests between ANN models and competing predictive models.

A total of 46 pairs of models were evaluated in an objective model-building environment. Either logistic regression or multiple regression models were developed and then were compared to ANN models using the same set of input variables. Three sets of B2B data were used to test the models. Emphasis also was placed on evaluating small samples.

ANN models tend to generate model predictions that are more accurate or the same as logistic regression models. However, when ANN models are compared to multiple regression models, the results are mixed. For small sample sizes, the modeling results are the same as for larger samples.

Like all marketing research, this application is limited by the methods and the data used to conduct the research. The findings strongly suggest that, because of their predictive accuracy, ANN models will have an important role in the future of B2B marketing research and model-building applications.

ANN models should be carefully considered for potential use in marketing research and model-building applications by B2B academics and practitioners alike.

The research contributes to the B2B marketing literature by providing a more rigorous test on ANN models using B2B data than has been conducted before.

This study aims to identify evolution and advancement in the field of business-to-business (B2B) loyalty knowledge area by analyzing its intellectual structure.

The authors use bibliometric analysis for quantitative evaluation of scholarly studies published on B2B loyalty area over a period of 27 years (1993–2020). The authors analyze intellectual knowledge base of B2B loyalty area by looking into 263 studies with 14,028 references authored by 693 researchers.

The results provide a comprehensive review of B2B loyalty area by identifying its foundations, influential works and intellectual communication linkage between these works. Notably, the analysis reveals most cited studies, key authors, important keywords, intellectual turning points and emerging trends of research in the discipline.

This study creates a baseline for presenting precise and comprehensive insights into research themes in B2B loyalty area, and identifies progressive trends over a period. This study is also helpful for researchers in identifying future directions of research in the discipline.

This study reveals the intellectual structure of B2B loyalty area.

The business-to-business (B2B) marketing literature is heavily focused on the manufacturing sector. However, it is the B2B service sector that shows the highest growth in gross domestic product (GDP). Beyond a vibrant stream of literature on servitization, the B2B literature has neglected drawing on the wider service literature. This paper aims to examine recent streams of service research that have promising implications and research opportunities for B2B marketing.

Together, the author team has decades of research, managerial and executive teaching experience related to B2B marketing and services marketing and management. The observations and reflections in this paper originate from this unique perspective and are supplemented by insights from 16 expert interviews.

The authors identify and discuss in this paper four broad and related themes from the service literature that can stimulate B2B research and practice. First, the authors highlight the implications for capturing value in economies with their rapidly increasing specialization and related growth in B2B services. Specifically, the authors explain where B2B firms should focus on to gain bargaining power in the value chains of the future. Second, an additional strategy to enhance a B2B firm’s power to capture value is servitization, which allows firms to get closer to their customers, increase their switching costs and build strategic partnerships. The authors explore how firms can use service productization to enhance their chances of successful servitization. Third, servitization is expensive, and productivity and scalability are often a challenge in B2B contexts. These issues are tackled in a recent service research stream on cost-effective service excellence (CESE) where the authors derive implications for B2B firms. Fourth and related to CESE, latest developments in intelligent automation offer exciting opportunities for B2B services to be made more scalable.

This paper is based on the unique perspective of the author team and a panel of experts and connects major streams of service research to the B2B literature.

The purpose of this paper is to build on recent efforts occurring within business-to-business (B2B) marketing research to advance methodological developments. As phenomena within B2B relationships have become increasingly complex, marketing scholars have begun to point out the limitations associated with correlation-based methodological approaches and highlight the need for new developments in this area. One such development is the fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA).

This study uses a literature review to examine the use of fsQCA in B2B marketing research.

First, the current manuscript presents the benefits that the application of fsQCA can offer to market researchers investigating B2B phenomena. Second, the paper presents the current state of fsQCA use within B2B marketing. Third, it suggests possible marketing B2B research topics that can be explored using fsQCA.

The study highlights the benefits of fsQCA, presents the current state of fsQCA use within B2B marketing and offers a rich future research agenda for B2B marketing scholars. This agenda can also help spur additional method developments in the discipline.