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This study aims to find, analyse and synthesise the body of literature on how different health-care businesses form business-to-business (B2B) alliances. By doing so, this study seeks to identify visible research gaps to suggest future research questions and develop a conceptual framework to set a future research agenda.

The study uses the time-tested systematic literature review method to identify 57 studies that have addressed B2B relationships in the health-care industry. Thereafter, a qualitative analysis is performed to delineate the research profile and synthesise the key themes examined in the selected studies.

The qualitative analysis uncovers two key thematic foci: types and purposes of B2B relationships and pertinent issues in continued B2B relationships. Within these themes, the authors highlight different types of firms and their reasons for engaging in B2B relationships. The authors also summarise various issues that these firms deal with in such relationships. Finally, the authors highlight the limitations in the existing research and suggest future research questions to address them. The findings are summarised in a conceptual framework.

Although several reviews exist that evaluate the state-of-the-art research on B2B relationships, very few have examined the same in the context of health care. This review adds value to the research by providing a comprehensive overview of the existing findings in the area to encourage future research through a conceptual framework.

This study aims to introduce the special issue on digital marketing and business-to-business (B2B) relationships. In general, only modest attention has been devoted to the study of digitalization in the B2B sector and even less on the importance of the perils and promises of digitalization for B2B relationships. This study’s goal is to help focus scholarly attention on the implications of digitalization on B2B relationships.

In this conceptual paper, the authors’ approach is to carefully review relevant literature, and to lay out the field of digital marketing and B2B relationships, conceptualizing it for future research.

The authors find that the following areas are critically important to understanding future trends in digital marketing and B2B relationships: coopetition, value co-creation, B2B branding, servitization, innovation networks, relationship dynamics and power and trust.

The intersection of digitalization and B2B relationships is an under-researched topic. With this paper and the accompanying special issues papers, the authors hope to begin to fill this critical gap.

This study aims to fill a gap in branding literature concerning the effect of corporate brand relationships on brand value through the case study method in a business-to-business (B2B) context. The objectives of this study can be framed in the following three questions: what are the main constituents of a corporate brand; how does a corporate brand generate tangible and intangible brand value for their business customers; and how do tangible and intangible brand benefits influence relationship initiation and management practices of the case companies?

The study adopts a qualitative multiple cases study design by using archival data and both in-depth telephone and online interviews with senior representatives of the case study companies to investigate corporate branding and associated issues in a B2B context.

From a managerial perspective, this study reveals that corporate business culture, brand relationships, products and corporate identity and personality as the main constituents of a corporate brand in a B2B context. The results show that a corporate brand can generate intangible and tangible brand value benefits for business customers. The findings also note the importance of brand value in enhancing relationship initiation.

The study contributes to the branding literature by developing a conceptual model that explains the development and role of the corporate brand in a B2B context with its associated value creation and brand management outcomes. The findings advance brand management literature on business relationships, which addresses a gap in B2B contexts rather than mainly about product brand management and value creation in business-to-consumer contexts.

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.

Business-to-business (B2B) relations will become more prevalent in many areas such as delivery services, based on current trends supporting e-commerce proliferation. In addition, hyperlocal e-commerce, which focuses on customers in a small geographic region, relies heavily on another business to handle the supply chain. Emerging trends in business to business to customer (B2B2C) experiences provide retailers with opportunities to develop strategies for better customer service. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to develop a scale for measuring business customer experience in the B2B2C aggregator business model.

Using the psychometric scale development procedure, the researchers devised a 29-item, six-dimensional scale measuring business customer experience with the help of two cross-sectional studies. Restaurant managers who rely on delivery partners to serve their customers were surveyed twice. The authors validated a scale for assessing business customer experience using exploratory factor analysis, confirmatory factor analysis and structural equation modelling.

Based on fit criteria, a higher-order formative structure was best suited to the scale. The dimensions identified were shared vision, interaction experience, end-customer focus, relationship experience, service experience and outcome focus. According to the study, business customer experience is more objective and utilitarian than existing paradigms on customer experience.

Theoretically, this research helps to understand the underpinnings behind the formation of business customer experience and attempt to bring transformative service research focus in the B2B2C trilogy as better experiences predict the well-being of members of the business centre in the B2B.

Practically, this research helps businesses to revisit their strategies for a better relationship with business partners for jointly offering an improved experience to the end customers.

This study explains a pioneer attempt to develop a scale for business customer experience in the context of B2B2C aggregator business models.

This paper aims to combine the social–technical systems and social exchange theories with the resource-based view of the firm, to investigate how business-to-business (B2B) service firms manage their social and technical resources to manage customer relationships.

An online survey-based study with 321 managers working in Australian small and medium (SME) firms is used to test hypotheses about the sequential and substitutional impact of four social and technical resources (service quality, satisfaction, trust and commitment) on customer loyalty, using both offline and online platforms.

The findings show that both social and technical chains of effects are viable channels for B2B service firms to build customer loyalty; however, mixing of both social and technical resources results in the weakening of both these chains.

The results based on B2B service relationships between Australian SME firms and their banks may not be generalizable to other contexts.

This research would help managers in B2B service firms understand the pitfalls of combining their social and technical resources because it may hamper their ability to build customer loyalty. Hence, they need to learn how to synergize their marketing resources across both offline and online platforms to achieve optimal results.

This research introduces social and technical chains of effects as a novel way to examine the ability of B2B service firms to optimize their social and technical resources in a synergistic manner to build and nurture stronger customer relationships.

The purpose of this study is to empirically investigate the dark side of business-to-business (B2B) relationships in traditional business practices worldwide that rely on strong networks.

This study applies a questionnaire survey to collect data from buyers in 224 Kuwaiti firms and uses the partial least squares structural equation model for data analysis.

Drawing on the social exchange theory, we test the relationships between B2B wasta, relationship satisfaction, innovation and efficiency. The findings show that despite the belief that wasta brings long-term benefits when applied in B2B relationships, it negatively impacts the firm’s efficiency.

This study contributes to the existing literature on B2B relationships by identifying important issues related to the multifaceted nature of B2B wasta relationships. The study confirms the importance of relational and innovation benefits over economic consequences based on elements of social exchange theory, which extends our current understanding of the application of SET in B2B wasta relationships.

This study aims to identify and analyze factors affecting the business-to-business (B2B) relationship between Sri Lankan telecommunication operators and vendors. The authors conduct a survey and develop models to explain relationship strength and satisfaction. The authors find that telecommunication operators and vendors value trust, commitment, adaptation and communication. Operator satisfaction varies by perception of product quality, service support, delivery performance, supplier know-how and value for money. The vendor’s relationship strength is impacted by trust and commitment; vendor satisfaction is affected by economic factors and referencing. The authors suggest formulating management strategies using these results to strengthen business relationships.

The authors develop two conceptual models to analyze the supplier and customer perspectives. This study’s drafted models were drawn from established models and were presented to experts in the industry, both telecommunication operators and vendors. Models were modified based on experts’ feedback, and hypotheses were developed from the conceptual models, developed separately for the two perspectives. Data collection was done via questionnaires; 150 questionnaires were sent via email to identified telecommunication operators and 100 questionnaires were sent via email to identified telecommunication vendors, with follow-up emails and telephone calls to improve response rates.

This study’s findings show that employees in the telecommunication industry recognize the importance of B2B relationships. Employees of both telecommunication operators and vendors agree that stronger relationships are advantageous. The correlation and regression analysis results identify factors that affect the B2B relationship. The following factors impact the strength of B2B relationships irrespective of view point: trust, commitment and satisfaction. The following factors were found to significantly affect the strength of B2B relationships between telecommunication operators and vendors from the operator perspective: adaptation and communication.

To enhance relationship strength, the management of operator organizations should take action to improve trust, commitment and satisfaction. Demonstrating honesty and integrity when dealing with vendors and exhibiting concern for the other party’s interests can help establish trust or enhance trust in existing relationships. Displaying commitment toward the vendor will also facilitate stronger relationships. Reasonable profits for both parties and sizeable business volume will also help satisfy vendors, increasing relationship strength. Positive referencing of the vendor in industrial and public forums will improve vendor satisfaction, enhancing relationship strength. Reputational capital can be built and maintained for both operators and vendors by keeping promises and defending the other party to outsiders. For managers of telecommunications operators and vendors in other emerging markets, this study’s results are important and can inform internal business practices to support trust, commitment and satisfaction.

This study contributes to the existing literature in two ways, a focus on the telecommunication industry and a previously unexplored emerging market, Sri Lanka. In addition, this study includes an analysis of the relationship from both the operator and vendor perspectives.

This paper aims to develop a process model of business-to-business (B2B) relationship recovery after a transgression has placed the future of the relationship in doubt. The research questions ask, How are relationships recovered? and How does the relationship strength pre-transgression influence the recovery process?

The process model is empirically grounded with first-hand narratives of owner managers (OMs) and key personnel of Irish small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). Using the critical incident technique, 25 owner and manager interviews in 23 SMEs resulted in 48 recovery narratives.

The findings identify four types of outcomes flowing from two potential recovery process paths. The strength of the relationship pre-transgression and the desire to maintain the relationship influence the parties’ actions during the recovery process and the status of the relationship subsequently.

The authors acknowledge that each narrative in the data are the informants’ construction of the phenomenon. The B2B relationship recovery process model offers OMs and SMEs a blueprint of what to expect, and how they might reach for recovery instead of the relationship ending.

Prior studies either treat recovery as a minor part of an ending process or focus on a single sub-process, leaving the overall process under-researched. This study contributes to the B2B relationship dynamics discussion with a processual view of the overall recovery process, including recovery sub-processes, paths and temporal outcomes in different types of relationships and takes into account the pre-transgression relationship.

To investigate the determinants of behavioural brand loyalty amongst dissatisfied customers in the business‐to‐business (B2B) services sector.

A qualitative study was conducted, with 28 personal interviews undertaken with managers who are involved in the choice of service providers. The respondents belonged to 24 organisations located in Australia. Template analysis and eyeballing were techniques used to analyse the data collected.

Assessment of the reasons why dissatisfied customers stayed with the service providers resulted in six categories. The categories were found to be, in order of decreasing frequency, impact of alternative providers, switching costs (18), others (17), inertia (14), investment in relationships (13), and service recovery (13). The results not only confirmed factors found in the literature, but also uncovered 11 other factors.

The sample size, whilst appropriate for qualitative research, should be considered adequate only for exploratory analysis and a further quantitative study is needed to validate the study.

This study is important for those firms who have many prospective switchers because it is important to understand why these customers stay, and to what extent such firms can discourage such customers from leaving in both positive and negative ways. For those service firms that are attempting to attract these prospective switchers, an understanding of why they do not switch is important, as it will enable them to develop strategies to overcome these switching barriers and gain market share.

This research is the first study to investigate in a single model a range of barriers to switching in a B2B services context. The results that confirmed categories found in the literature also discovered 11 other factors not evident in the extant literature.