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This study empirically examines the role of the Internet in global business‐to‐business (B2B) marketing strategies of Multinational Corporations (MNCs) based in the United States and Australia. The results demonstrate that uses of the Internet in a global B2B setting often parallel its domestic uses but that variables that facilitate or inhibit its implementation for global operations are somewhat different in global markets. The findings suggest that MNCs in the two countries are using the Internet in their global B2B operations predominantly for business enhancement purposes as compared to revenue enhancement. Results also show that for global B2B operations, the Internet is viewed by MNCs as a tool to enhance competitive intelligence, streamline operations, and enhance the marketing processes. It is also deemed essential for a firm’s long‐term competitive stance by large as well as small and medium‐sized MNCs.

Export manufacturing firms from emerging markets can better meet customer needs by providing customization, which leads to competitive advantages. Although both practice and academic research have deeply discussed customization, the question of whether customization promotes export manufacturing firms' product innovation in the global B2B market is largely unexplored. The purpose of this paper is to address this issue.

This paper collects survey data from 2,248 export manufacturing firms in China and uses hierarchical moderated regression to explore the relationship between customization and product innovation in the global B2B market and their boundary conditions.

This research shows that customization positively affects export manufacturing firms' product innovation in the context of the global B2B market, and it shows that internal governance structure (contract governance and relationship governance) and external governance structure (legal enforceability) can be used as boundary conditions that affect the relationship. Specifically, contract governance has an inverted U-shaped moderating effect on the relationship between customization and product innovation; moreover, relationship governance and legal enforceability can strengthen the positive relationship between customization and product innovation.

The study explores the relationship between customization and product innovation in the global B2B market and examines the moderating effect of internal and external governance structures. In addition, the study enriches the research related to customization and product innovation in the context of the global B2B market and provides essential practical insight into the survival of export manufacturing firms from emerging markets.

To provide the foundation for further research and good practice in benchmarking since it combines the best aspects of traditional and new internet marketing activities.

A methodological triangulation approach has been adopted that uses secondary data, a mail questionnaire survey, and case studies, to collect quantitative and qualitative data. The answers of each respondent were coded into the statistical package for social science (SPSS). Frequency analysis was used for data reduction purposes and to develop an overall understanding of the survey responses and a general picture of how the sample group has responded. The initial analysis used descriptive analysis for the whole sample. Furthermore, factor, regression and path analysis were used to study the research variables and their relationships.

Identification of business‐to‐business international internet marketing (B2B IIM) critical success factors (CSF) by a holistic literature review and a series of statistical and qualitative analysis of the relevant data. Provides information and valuable insights into the marketers' acceptance of the internet for B2B marketing activities. It has also tested the validity of the TAM and IDT in the domain of internet environment.

B2B IIM is an area of research where theory is still inadequate. This study is limited by its cross sectional nature. An additional limitation of the study is the reliance on the subjective, self‐report indicators to measure the research constructs in the survey questionnaire. Another limitation to this study is in representativeness and generlisability issues.

In terms of academic implications, it proposes factors that affect the adoption of the internet for B2B international marketing activities. A key managerial implication is the effect of internet usage on B2B IIM efficiency. Notably, it was found that the use of the internet affects B2B IIM efficiency not directly, but indirectly, through B2B marketing and customer relations activities, international marketing targeting activities and marketing performance. This means that the competitive advantage of marketing efficiency is not automatically achieved with the adoption of the internet.

This paper offers several avenues for investigating individual factors that have a direct impact on the use of internet for international marketing purpose.

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 review the latest management developments across the globe and pinpoint practical implications from cutting-edge research and case studies.

This briefing is prepared by an independent writer who adds their own impartial comments and places the articles in context.

Using social media platforms in a creative and engaging way can help companies not only achieve good relationships with their customers, but with other businesses as well.

Businesses should engage with social media for international connections, adopting marketing strategies for specific customers and industries. They should also find a balance between physical and social networking.

A revolutionized marketing strategy in which businesses can become global leaders through strong networks.

The briefing saves busy executives, strategists and researchers hours of reading time by selecting only the very best, most pertinent information and presenting it in a condensed and easy-to-digest format.

The objective of this paper is to explore and determine a set of factors that are critical to the success of business‐to‐business (B2B) e‐markets in the aerospace and defence, healthcare, higher education and local government industry sectors, in order to advance our current understanding of what factors facilitate e‐market adoption and success. The paper examines critical success factors (CSFs) for e‐markets from a strategic fit perspective.

The study adopted a semi‐inductive qualitative approach based on a review of the literature, followed by a pilot study and 58 indepth semi‐structured interviews with senior level executives in buyer, supplier, e‐market and third‐party organisations. Qualitative data analysis software, QSR N6, was used to code and analyse the interview data for citations that corresponded with the candidate e‐market CSFs that had been identified either in the literature, pilot study or during the course of the interviews with respondents. The CSFs for e‐markets were ranked by the frequency of respondents citing a particular CSF.

The study found eight factors that are critical to e‐market success and four factors (critical mass, integration issues, value proposition, and leadership participation) were found to be conducive to e‐market success in all four industry sectors. Likewise, four factors (industry knowledge, revenue model, branding and reputation, and rich content) were found to be only conducive to e‐market success in three of the four industry sectors.

The paper can help academic researchers, managers, consultants, practitioners and other professionals better understand what factors are critical to the success of e‐markets and other online enterprises operating in the B2B marketspace.

There have been numerous calls for more empirical research on the dynamics of e‐market adoption for more than a decade. To date, research on the CSFs for e‐markets has been largely anecdotal and sporadic with a paucity of studies noting factors that are likely to be favourable to e‐market success. This study addresses the call for more research on e‐markets and imparts empirical evidence on factors that are perceived to be conducive to the success of e‐markets. It contributes to the base of knowledge on e‐markets by relating the concept of CSFs with the theory of strategic fit as, to date, no known study has examined CSFs for e‐markets from a strategic fit perspective. The study also presents the benefits capabilities‐industry participants’ needs fit conceptual model as a precursor for theory building in future studies on B2B e‐markets and informs stakeholders involved in developing e‐markets or other online B2B ventures to better comprehend the conditions and determinants of success.

This paper aims to explore the role of configurations of relationship quality dimensions for explaining sources of behavioral outcomes in the globalized manufacturing industry.

A joint analysis of behavioral and objective performance data from globalized manufacturing links perceptual customer metrics that relate to dimensions of relationship quality (i.e. attitudinal loyalty, perceived customer orientation, customers’ perceived innovativeness of the supplier and perceived customer influence on supplier innovation) with behavioral outcomes (i.e. share of wallet (SOW) and customer account profitability). Using data from a global business-to-business (B2B) customer survey together with archival performance data from a multinational mechanical engineering firm, a fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) is performed.

The fsQCA results suggest that perceptual customer metrics related to innovation can be relevant aspects of relationship quality, in line with Anderson and Mittal’s (2000) satisfaction-repurchase-profitability chain framework and its adaptation to SOW. However, the underlying complexities in the different combinations of attributes in the recipe are such that they are not equifinal in leading to higher SOW or higher profitability. This paper finds indications for non-linearities between perceptual measures investigated and profitability of customer accounts, with particular relevance for the role of perceived customer orientation, perceived product innovativeness of the supplier and attitudinal loyalty.

The analysis faces a number of limitations, starting with its reliance on cross-sectional survey data, which does not enable us to account for feedback mechanisms, for example, arising from customer perceptions regarding innovation aspects. The lack of a multidimensional conceptionalization of the perceptual customer constructs may have limited the analysis, considering also recent evidence from retail companies in the furniture sector in Spain, suggesting that the multidimensional conceptualization of relationship value explained satisfaction and loyalty levels to a greater extent than the one-dimensional conceptualization (Ruiz-Martínez et al., 2019).

In terms of managerial implication, the results suggest that customers perceive limited value in participating in the focal firm’s innovation value chain funnel, hence customer loyalty cannot be bought using simple incentive strategies. The results with regard to customer account profitability suggest that B2B customers investigated here may distinguish when interacting with their globalized supplier in the innovation funnel: they may see a positive customer value when the innovation is a product, and thus, relation-specific, whereas they may see limited customer value when innovation is considered in more generic terms (customers’ perceived influence on supplier innovation in general).

This paper starts from the premise that perceptual customer metrics can matter for supplier performance, as the customer relationship and customer value management research has shown. However, there is limited empirical evidence from globalized manufacturing sectors incorporating perceptual constructs in behavioral outcomes, and limited evidence assessing customer-perceived value in such sectors through alternate approaches to main-effects focused analyzes. We employ qualitative comparative analysis using fuzzy sets (Russo et al., 2019) to address these gaps, focusing on two key behavioral outcomes, namely, customer account profitability and SOW.

The objective of this paper is to explore and determine a set of factors that are critical to the success of business-to-business (B2B) e-markets in the aerospace and defence, healthcare, higher education and local government industry sectors, in order to advance our current understanding of what factors facilitate e-market adoption and success. The paper examines critical success factors (CSFs) for e-markets from a strategic fit perspective.

The study adopted a semi-inductive qualitative approach based on a review of the literature, followed by a pilot study and 58 indepth semi-structured interviews with senior level executives in buyer, supplier, e-market and third-party organisations. Qualitative data analysis software, QSR N6, was used to code and analyse the interview data for citations that corresponded with the candidate e-market CSFs that had been identified either in the literature, pilot study or during the course of the interviews with respondents. The CSFs for e-markets were ranked by the frequency of respondents citing a particular CSF.

The study found eight factors that are critical to e-market success and four factors (critical mass, integration issues, value proposition, and leadership participation) were found to be conducive to e-market success in all four industry sectors. Likewise, four factors (industry knowledge, revenue model, branding and reputation, and rich content) were found to be only conducive to e-market success in three of the four industry sectors.

The paper can help academic researchers, managers, consultants, practitioners and other professionals better understand what factors are critical to the success of e-markets and other online enterprises operating in the B2B marketspace.

There have been numerous calls for more empirical research on the dynamics of e-market adoption for more than a decade. To date, research on the CSFs for e-markets has been largely anecdotal and sporadic with a paucity of studies noting factors that are likely to be favourable to e-market success. This study addresses the call for more research on e-markets and imparts empirical evidence on factors that are perceived to be conducive to the success of e-markets. It contributes to the base of knowledge on e-markets by relating the concept of CSFs with the theory of strategic fit as, to date, no known study has examined CSFs for e-markets from a strategic fit perspective. The study also presents the benefits capabilities-industry participants’ needs fit conceptual model as a precursor for theory building in future studies on B2B e-markets and informs stakeholders involved in developing e-markets or other online B2B ventures to better comprehend the conditions and determinants of success.

In the late 1990’s, online B2B auctions were proliferating and were being adopted in a wide variety of circumstances. The reverse auction tool has evolved to take advantage of internet technology, and online auctions have been identified by many large organisations as a tool to achieve procurement savings. As companies adopt this technology, it is important for them to understand the implications of this type of procurement. This paper adopts a case study approach to identify the issues for both buyers and sellers using this type of B2B application. It describes the conduct of a reverse auction, from the preliminary steps all the way to the final awarding of the contract. The case study is viewed through the eyes of a supplier, undertaking a reverse auction for the first time. The main outcomes show that the auction vendor and buyer were major winners – with the supplier expending considerable time and effort to participate in the auction, only to realise that the auction places cost above all other factors in awarding the contract. The importance of cost over service delivery, customer support and buyer‐supplier relationship was the “bitter pill” the supplier had to swallow.

To examine issues related to the development of the internet and e‐commerce (EC) in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

Two surveys were sent out following a pilot project to gather data on the validity and reliability of the questionnaires. The first survey was sent to 60 internet users, a total of 48 responded with a rate of 80 per cent. The second was sent to 60 managers and accountants within organisations in Saudi Arabia, a total of 44 responded with a rate of 73 per cent.

The key challenges identified for Saudi's organisations are the continuing relying on face‐to‐face contact principles, problems with information overload, charges still expensive, the need for technical support and expertise, lack of a management commitment and understanding the potential role of information technology (IT) on the country's future and middle aged and older people were more reluctant to use IT.

Difficulties in reaching the right people to answer questions. This paper was relying on the subjective opinions and generlisability issues and it could benefited from further analysis.

For executives, the implications of the findings are that those factors identified can be used as a checklist to assist companies in their effective adoption of e‐business and the maximisation of opportunities.

This paper is an initial phase of an on going research, which will contribute to the body of knowledge in the EC domain from different cultural perspectives.