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In the past few decades, relationship management (RM) theory and RM strategies in business-to-business (B2B) contexts have evolved tremendously, driven by constant innovation. Hence, the purpose of this study is to understand the trends and evolution of RM and relationship quality (RQ) in B2B contexts and empirical insights on RM and RQ in B2B, which in turn would provide insights into trends and future research directions.

Grounded on the industrial marketing and purchasing group, this study adopts a critical systematic literature review to provide a comprehensive analysis of the past, current and future trends in empirical research insights of RM and RQ in B2B markets.

This study provides some novel insights into RM in B2B context by using a multidimensional approach to RM and RQ and analyzing prior marketing research from three perspectives: the evolution of RM and RQ in B2B context; prior empirical research; and practical business insights. Overall, these perspectives inform the development of an evolving side of RQ in B2B contexts, leading to some predictions regarding the future of RM in B2B markets.

The exploratory results of this study shed light on the key factors that drive RQ and the importance of RM in B2B markets in the digital age where customers still long for human interaction regardless of the prevalence of advanced technology.

In the wake of advanced technologies and particularly, B2B companies had to turn to virtual platforms and embrace digital transformation to establish and manage their customer relationships. Yet, managing relationships via digital channels has its own challenges for both B2B practitioners and scholars. This indicates that there is still a huge need for attuned RM strategies that align with the changing environments – mainly driven by technological advancement – in B2B markets.

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.

This paper aims to present a bibliometric overview of the leading trends of the journals in industrial marketing during for 25 years. Thus, the purpose is to carry out an analysis about contributions that industrial marketing or business to business (B2B) marketing discipline has done for scientific investigation, presenting a ranking of the 30 most influential journals and their global evolution by five-year periods from 1992 to 2016. Moreover, this study presents the amount of citations, who quotes who from the top 15 ranking and self-citations.

This study analyzes 3,587 documents classified as articles, letters, notes and reviews from Clarivate Analytics’ Web of Science for the period 1992- 2016, by bibliometric indicators such as H-index, total citations (TC), total papers (TP), TC/TP. Furthermore, this paper develops a graphical visualization of the bibliographic material by using the visualization of similarities viewer software for constructing and visualizing bibliometric networks in leading journals, publications and keywords with bibliographic coupling and co-citation analysis.

Industrial Marketing Management is the leader of the ranking, representing 34 per cent of the total manuscripts considered in this study. The most influential journals were classified by periods of five years and the top five for the period 2012-2016 were in ascending order: Industrial Marketing Management, Journal of Business & Industrial Marketing, Journal of Business-to-Business Marketing, Journal of Business Research and Journal of Marketing. Therefore, in this last period, the considered specialized journals of industrial marketing have increased the quantity (TP) and quality (better H-index) of marketing contributions. The main node on the keywords was of “business-to-business marketing.” The most frequent keywords were “industrial marketing,” “trust,” “business-to-business,” “B2B,” “relationship marketing” and finally “electronic commerce”.

The information presented in this paper is useful to academics, publishers, academic institutions and other interested groups in industrial marketing because it makes available a global and current picture of this discipline that could be used to make decisions about publishing strategies and journal position.

This study aims to analyze the progress of industrial marketing discipline, reviewing the contribution of several scientific journals for 25 years. In fact, to the authors’ knowledge, this is the first quantitative study focused on the only purpose of ranking the most influential journals and keywords analysis using bibliometric techniques and networks theories.

This study aims to propose a conceptual framework based on organisational and environmental indicators of business-to-business sellers’ sales performance in services firms.

A descriptive research design was applied and data was gathered from 389 respondents across industries and different-sized services firms in Norway using a self-administered questionnaire.

Results show that the proposed six-dimensional framework of organisational and environmental indicators can be applied to manage seller–customer relationships in a business-to-business environment.

A six-dimensional framework of organisational and environmental indicators is tested successfully in services firms.

Increasingly, services firms will need to work closely with business-to-business sellers to proactively adapt to market changes through a co-creation approach to build long-term seller–customer relationships.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, no previous study has focused on relationship marketing in business-to-business relationships that proposes a conceptual framework based on organisational and environmental indicators of business-to-business sellers’ sales performance in services firms.

The purpose of this study is to develop a synthesized conceptual framework for artificial intelligence (AI) adoption in the field of business-to-business (B2B) marketing.

A conceptual development approach has been adopted, based on a content analysis of 59 papers in peer-reviewed academic journals, to identify drivers, barriers, practices and consequences of AI adoption in B2B marketing. Based on these analyses and findings, a conceptual model is developed.

This paper identifies the following two key drivers of AI adoption: the shortcomings of current marketing activities and the external pressure imposed by informatization. Seven outcomes are identified, namely, efficiency improvements, accuracy improvements, better decision-making, customer relationship improvements, sales increases, cost reductions and risk reductions. Based on information processing theory and organizational learning theory (OLT), an integrated conceptual framework is developed to explain the relationship between each construct of AI adoption in B2B marketing.

This study is the first conceptual paper that synthesizes drivers, barriers and outcomes of AI adoption in B2B marketing. The conceptual model derived from the combination of information processing theory and OLT provides a comprehensive framework for future work and opens avenues of research on this topic. This paper contributes to both AI literature and B2B literature.

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.

Although the value of artificial intelligence (AI) has been acknowledged by companies, the literature shows challenges concerning AI-enabled business-to-business (B2B) marketing innovation, as well as the diversity of roles AI can play in this regard. Accordingly, this study investigates the approaches that AI can be used for enabling B2B marketing innovation.

Applying a bibliometric research method, this study systematically investigates the literature regarding AI-enabled B2B marketing. It synthesises state-of-the-art knowledge from 221 journal articles published between 1990 and 2021.

Apart from offering specific information regarding the most influential authors and most frequently cited articles, the study further categorises the use of AI for innovation in B2B marketing into five domains, identifying the main trends in the literature and suggesting directions for future research.

Through the five identified domains, practitioners can assess their current use of AI and identify their future needs in the relevant domains in order to make appropriate decisions on how to invest in AI. Thus, the research enables companies to realise their digital marketing innovation strategies through AI.

The research represents one of the first large-scale reviews of relevant literature on AI in B2B marketing by (1) obtaining and comparing the most influential works based on a series of analyses; (2) identifying five domains of research into how AI can be used for facilitating B2B marketing innovation and (3) classifying relevant articles into five different time periods in order to identify both past trends and future directions in this specific field.

The purpose of this paper is to contribute to the elevation of the business-to-business (B2B) marketing field at the business school level.

The study follows a Delphi method. The authors conducted two rounds of discovery to answer: why do you think universities do not highly appreciate publications in Industrial Marketing Management, Journal of Business and Industrial Marketing or Journal of Business-to-Business Marketing? What would you suggest for improving the impact of such journals not only in the USA but around the world?

Through the analysis of the coding transcript, four categories were found to elevate the B2B marketing field at the business school level: B2B as uncommon ground, B2B researcher practices, marketing science underpinnings and B2B marketing journals management.

The value of current research is based on its explorative nature and application of grounded theory to provide a framework to analyze how to elevate the B2B marketing field at the business school level.

This study aims to map out the ways in which the intellectual structure and research trends of scientific publications come together in business-to-business (B2B) marketing strategies in the health-care sector. More specifically, it aims first to identify the fundamental contributions of research in this area of knowledge and second to determine the lines of research that constitute the most prominent intellectual contribution to the development of a solid future research agenda.

The statistical and analytical methods include bibliometric, co-citation and cluster analysis techniques. To identify useful patterns of information within the paper, this study sought paid special attention to scholarship that was jointly cited. This study then applied hierarchical cluster analysis to the totality of the co-cited paper and then grouped the interrelated paper into distinct sets.

This study were able to systematically identify and classify various theoretical perspectives of B2B marketing strategies within the health-care sector into four main approaches, namely, decision-making strategies; relational marketing; co-creation; new challenges.

By systematically identifying, exploring and analyzing the key priorities of B2B marking within the health-care sector, this study contributes positively to the existing literature. The added value is that the work will help to further improve the international standards of excellence within the health-care sector and its marking apparatuses.

This chapter describes the main issues in scientific literature related to industrial branding. First, we set the background focusing on industrial branding, followed by brand equity and measurement, and brand orientation in business markets. The second section relies on controversies and problems inherent in the gaps in theory and implementation of branding. The third section proposes several solutions and recommendations for academics and practitioners, followed by proposals for future research directions and conclusions. We also present a case study and several case questions arising.