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This paper aims to explore the challenges and opportunities faced by buying centers in small and medium enterprises (SME) manufacturing companies in view of recent technological changes and the virtualization of communication.

This study uses a qualitative approach with multiple case studies to portray complex realities within the buying centers in the manufacturing SME context. The authors selected five Italian companies to portray the diverse characteristics, practices and policies of relevant stakeholders before reaching saturation with the issues explored.

The authors find that interactions among buying center members are more effective with greater collaboration and exchange (as opposed to competition and a struggle for power). Virtual/hybrid relations require greater intra-group cooperation, whereas diverse backgrounds and collaborative interactions help the flexibility and performance of the buying center. Greater use of technology produces certainty and automation, but it may also cause overload and biases that can be solved with the ability to analyze and clear responsibility for decisions.

The authors studied only five Italian companies in this study. Future research in other countries with diverse cultural and socio-economic conditions and methods would help extend this research.

The findings would improve the understanding of the challenges of adopting new purchase process technologies that would help automate routine tasks, produce useful data and support decision-making.

Unlike prior studies, this study uses an exploratory design to study the evolution of buying centers in SMEs to seek deeper insights into the challenges and opportunities faced by SMEs because of the growing use of emerging technologies.

This study explores the relationship among relationship-selling, celebrity attachment and customer engagement.

Hypotheses were tested, using structural equation modeling on survey responses of 321 participants.

This study determines the connection between relationship-selling factors and customer engagement using the stimulus-organism-response (SOR) theory. Results demonstrate that interactional intensity, mutual disclosure and cooperative intention exert considerable positive effects on celebrity attachment, which, in turn, significantly impacts customer engagement.

The research findings add to the existing body of knowledge through more information on the degree to which relationship-selling factors affect celebrity attachment, and eventually, customer engagement. The study also aims to prompt researchers and organizations to consider effective communication strategies to increase online customer engagement.

Trust is an important facilitator of successful B2B relationships. The purpose of this study is to investigate affect-based antecedents of both interpersonal and interorganizational trust, and their impact on the performance of buyer–supplier relationships. The authors ask two research questions: (1) What are affect-based dimensions of interpersonal and interorganizational trust? (2) How do interpersonal and interorganizational trust influence buyers’ operational performance?

The authors use data from an original survey of 156 buyer–supplier relationships between multinational enterprise subsidiaries and local suppliers in the Thai manufacturing sector to develop a structural model in which the authors test the hypotheses.

Consistent with social exchange theory and social psychology, the empirical analysis shows that affect-based dimensions at the individual level, namely, likeability, similarity and frequent social contact, and at the organizational level, namely, supplier firm willingness to customize and institutionalization of cooperation, are important for establishing trust. In addition, interpersonal trust enhances buyers’ operational performance indirectly via interorganizational trust.

Buying and selling firms may develop organizational trust by developing processes that enhance organizational trust. Individuals with purchasing or sales responsibilities may enhance trust in their personal relationship. However, such interpersonal trust needs to be translated to the organizational level to benefit organizational performance.

The findings contribute to the literature on affect-based antecedents and outcomes of trust. Specifically, the authors offer theory and empirical evidence regarding the contribution of salespersons toward affect-based dimensions of trust and its impact on buyer’s operational performance.

Sales organizations embrace technological innovation. However, salespeople’s willingness to use new technology influences a firm’s return on investment, representing a significant concern for the organization. These concerns highlight tensions regarding the tradeoffs associated with technology implementations. The purpose of this study is to offer insights that help reduce the complexities of sales technology (ST) by exploring the changing dynamics of contemporary business relationships.

This paper synthesizes the ST literature using the service ecosystem perspective to propose the sales techno-ecosystem (STE) framework, providing new insights into organizational decision-making related to the ongoing digital transformation of sales tasks.

This synthesis of the ST literature with the service ecosystem seeks to clarify the impact of technology within the evolving nature of buyer–seller relationships by providing four unique perspectives.

Perspective 1 reviews the sales-service ecosystem framework and develops the theoretical underpinnings and relevant terminologies. Perspective 2 summarizes critical aspects of the ST literature and provides foundations for future research in the STE. Perspective 3 offers a more granular view, explicating roles and contexts prevalent in buyer–seller–technology interactions. Perspective 4 provides a set of tenets and advances research questions related to each tenet.

The culmination of these four perspectives is the introduction of five key tenants designed to help guide strategy and research.

The paper advances Hartmann et al. (2018) service ecosystem paradigm by explicating critical aspects of its ST domain to generate insights for theory and practice.

The purpose of this study is to understand customer experience (CX) in business-to-business (B2B) markets through the perspectives of buyer–seller dyads. This study aims to evaluate how customer journey, touchpoints and digital and social media (DSM) influence CX and offer avenues for sellers to align their efforts with buyers’ requirements to create and manage CX.

Integrating insights of practicing buyers and sellers in the pharmaceutical B2B industry, this study follows the phenomenological approach to understand their experience through their perspectives on the customer journey, touchpoints and DSM.

The findings of this study include convergence in the perspectives in journey stages, journey enablers, stakeholder involvement, touchpoint preference and DSM’s use. The study findings also include divergence in perspectives in the senior management engagement, journey enablers, selling center involvement, DSM purpose and usage of DSM platforms. These offer opportunities for sellers to align with buyer journey, touchpoints and DSM to create and manage CX.

Sellers in pharmaceutical B2B markets have been dependent on traditional knowledge to influence customer journey and touchpoints and the advent of DSM has enhanced the challenge. To avoid this confusion, sellers need to have clarity of customers’ expectations on the journey, touchpoints and DSM. This enables sellers to allocate their resources better to achieve the desired outcome in CX.

This first-of-its-kind study captured the convergence and divergence perspectives of pharmaceutical B2B buyer–seller dyads from the lens of the uncertainty reduction theory and social penetration theory. The study suggests opportunities for pharmaceutical sellers to create and manage CX.

This study examines factors that affect customer lifetime value (CLV) in fast-food restaurants (FFRs) in Jordan. These factors are relational benefits, brand experiences, service quality (SQ), satisfaction, trust and commitment.

An online survey was collected from a sample of 503 respondents. The authors used SPSS to test the constructs' relationships and analyse the data. SmartPLS was used to test the hypotheses.

In contrast to previous studies, not all dimensions of brand experiences and relational benefits had a significant and positive influence on relationship marketing outcomes (satisfaction, trust and commitment). On the other hand, results demonstrated that SQ had a significant and positive influence on relationship marketing outcomes. Furthermore, research reveals that satisfaction, trust and commitment significantly and positively influenced CLV.

Those FFRs that seek to enhance CLV should build solid and sustainable bonds with their customers. This paper concludes by stating its implications, its limitations and the opportunities available for future research.

This study, which is unique in the Middle East, includes essential strategies for managing customer relationship that can be universally applied to improve customer benefits and maximise the performance of businesses.

This study investigates the role of knowledge collecting and donating in enhancing relationship proneness and intimacy and improving a bank's salesperson satisfaction and performance.

Using the snowball technique, 315 online questionnaires were collected from commercial banks. A total of 300 useable questionnaires were included for further analysis.

The findings demonstrated that knowledge collecting affects relationship proneness and salesperson performance, while knowledge donating affects relationship proneness but not satisfaction. The results also suggested that relationship proneness is responsible for salesperson intimacy. Furthermore, intimacy was found to affect salesperson performance and satisfaction. Finally, salesperson satisfaction was found to affect salesperson performance positively.

The findings help bankers understand and utilize the power of their knowledge management in improving their sales performance and developing suitable training and strategies to strengthen salesperson intimacy.

This study incorporated knowledge management, relationship proneness and intimacy to enhance a better understanding of how these indicators will affect the salesperson's satisfaction and performance.

This study aims to investigate the determinant factors as barriers and facilitators of the B2B degree of digital use and customer–brand engagement in travel services by applying technology and behavioral theories.

A face-to-face survey was administered to retail travel agencies offering offline and online services (N = 301). Structural equation modeling using the partial least square method was conducted using Smart PLS 3.0 software to examine the proposed hypotheses in the research model.

The results revealed that the integrated composite model significantly predicts the B2B degree of digital use and brand engagement. The study established that facilitators had positive effects, and barriers negatively impacted the degree of digital use, which positively impacted brand engagement. However, the facilitator perceived cost and barrier lack of critical mass showed the opposite influence. The effects of facilitator customer pressure and barriers, information and communication technology infrastructure problems and security risks were insignificant. The results also established that the buyer firm size moderated the relationships between barriers and facilitators with the degree of digital use.

This study combined technology and behavioral theories to explain the buyer–seller relationship. The expanded framework contributed to understanding B2B digital usages and brand engagement in the seller–intermediary relationship. This study conceptualized firm size as a contingency variable and established its moderating effect. The study defined cost as a formative construct and an organizational factor. The study suggested practical implications for travel agencies and online travel service sellers.

The purpose of this paper is to offer a comprehensive overview of current research on customer behavior in the business-to-business (B2B) context and propose a research agenda for future studies. Despite being a relatively recent area of interest for academics and practitioners, a literature review that synthesizes existing knowledge into coherent topics and outlines a research agenda for future research is still lacking.

Drawing on a systematic literature review of 219 papers and using a text-mining approach based on the Latent Dirichlet Allocation algorithm, this paper enhances the existing knowledge of B2B customer behavior and provides a descriptive analysis of the literature.

From this review, ten major research topics are found and analyzed. These topics were analyzed through the lens of the Theory, Context, Characteristics and Method framework, providing a summary of key findings from prior studies. Additionally, an integrative framework was developed, offering insights into future research directions.

This study presents a novel contribution to the field of B2B by providing a systematic review of the topic of customer behavior, filling a gap in the literature and offering a valuable resource for scholars and managers seeking to advance the field.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is transforming consumers' experiences and how firms identify, create, nurture and manage interactive marketing relationships. However, most marketers do not have a clear understanding of what AI is and how it may mutually benefit consumers and firms. In this paper, the authors conduct an extensive review of the marketing literature, develop an AI framework for understanding value co-creation in interactive buyer–seller marketing relationships, identify research gaps and offer a future research agenda.

The authors first conduct an extensive literature review in 16 top marketing journals on AI. Based on this review, an AI framework for understanding value co-creation in interactive buyer–seller marketing relationships was conceptualized.

The literature review led to a number of key research findings and summary areas: (1) an historical perspective, (2) definitions and boundaries of AI, (3) AI and interactive marketing, (4) relevant theories in the domain of interactive marketing and (5) synthesizing AI research based on antecedents to AI usage, interactive AI usage contexts and AI-enabled value co-creation outcomes.

This is one of the most extensive reviews of AI literature in marketing, including an evaluation of in excess or 300 conceptual and empirical research. Based on the findings, the authors offer a future research agenda, including a visual titled “What is AI in Interactive Marketing? AI design factors, AI core elements & interactive marketing AI usage contexts.”