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The purpose of this article is to review the emerging literature of services business markets (SBMs) from 1974 to 2007 and analyse main themes that indicate the development of the literature. It also aims to provide an introduction to the special issue on services business‐to‐business markets by examining the context.

The literature of SBMs from 1974 through 2007 was searched in relevant databases. The articles were analysed using Glaser's grounded theory. The constant comparison method was used with in vivo coding to reveal themes in the literature. These themes were then analysed contextually.

The literature revealed seven themes which followed a trajectory from implicit to explicit consideration of SBMs, as well as to multi‐ and cross‐disciplinary focus with integration of variables from consumer services marketing. The landscape for SBMs has become blurred due to deregulation, globalisation and information technology, particularly the internet and e‐commerce. The complexity and diversity of the literature reflects this new, blurred reality.

This research is limited to indicative literature about SBMs as an introduction to the special issue on services business‐to‐business markets. The literature would benefit from a full critical review and research agenda.

The integration of theories coupled with the focus on specific service sectors and contexts, provide useful, applicable and transferable concepts which may be helpful to managers who are working in new contexts.

This article surveys the emergence of the literature on SBMs and defines its trajectory, themes and characteristics. It provides a useful background for academics and practitioners who would find a guide to the fissiparous literature on SBMs useful.

This paper presents the development process, methodology and findings from the first stage of an ongoing collaborative research project undertaken to determine the performance indicators employed by hotel general managers. The main focus of the study is to gain a greater understanding of the decision‐making context in which general managers of national and international hotel chains use performance measures (with properties located in Europe). In particular, interest is directed at assessing the match between the “key indicators” used by general managers, their “interpretation” of the indicators and the use made of the indicators for “decision‐making”. By drawing upon theoretical concepts and empirical evidence in the literature, the content examines performance measurement in a hotel industry context and presents the analysis and evaluation of quantitative results.

The aim of this paper is to provide insights into the links between managerial accounting, as a tool for monitoring and governing multinational hotel companies, and corporate management approaches.

The paper builds upon an extensive survey of general managers previously published by the authors, followed up with interviews and an in‐depth analysis of different management scenarios in the context of multinational hotel companies.

This paper's findings suggest that “management by values” appears to be particularly adapted to multinational hotel companies, because of their organisation features, i.e. a network spread in different environments, and partially shapes the management accounting choices of performance indicators at various levels in the organisation.

The limitations of this research would depend on the limited amount of data collected, i.e. 13 interviews, of which eight are analysed, if there were any attempt to generalise the findings.

Implications are both theoretical and practical: the former refer to avenues of further research being opened within this paper, the latter refer to the suggestion that managers in multinational hotel companies might begin to question their own organisations and consider reflecting upon their management approach, in light of the insights provided in this paper.

This paper fits with the established literature on management accounting, but also points towards new connections with the corporate management literature.

The purpose of this article is to investigate trust in financial services business markets.

The article provides qualitative research, based on 147 in‐depth interviews with corporate bankers and their clients.

The article finds that perceptions of trust and the operationalisation of trust were asymmetrical across the dyads and segments. Small companies were more trusting than large corporates. Bankers used calculative and operational trust and were cynical about their counterparts' trustworthiness. Bankers were quick to eliminate clients from their portfolio who did not, in their view, provide full disclosure of pertinent facts.

There may be different findings for other cultural contexts and financial service industries. The article encourages research in other contexts and industries and provides a platform to encourage this.

The article provides guidelines for bankers and their clients to understand the importance of trust in their relationships, and to understand how it is operationalised differently by the counterparts.

There are few studies of trust in either services business markets, or financial services business markets. Therefore, this article makes a valuable contribution. It also provides a critical review and integrates the literature on trust as applied to financial services business markets.

The purpose of the paper is to analyse empirically research‐oriented university‐industry relationships based on the incorporation of relationship marketing (RM) and technology transfer theory.

This paper is based on an extensive literature review and initial qualitative research, a conceptual model is presented and tested using structural equation modelling methods. Analysis was conducted, and is reported, in three steps, including path analysis and hypothesis testing, model re‐specification and a multi‐group analysis comparing university and industry respondents.

Trust, commitment and integration were found to positively influence satisfaction and were confirmed as key drivers of successful university‐industry relationships. While trust was the strongest driver of satisfaction, commitment emerged as the strongest predictor of intention to renew. The results also confirmed the proposed interrelationships between the relationship characteristics. Organisational compatibility emerged as positively influencing all relationship characteristics, indicating its relevance for university‐industry relationships and suggesting its potential importance for other relationships crossing essentially different organisational environments. Surprisingly, only a weak influence of staff personal experience on commitment was found.

The results are limited to Australian relationships and by their cross‐disciplinary nature. Furthermore, a potential bias towards positive relationships might exist in the data.

The primary contribution of this paper lies in the development of a foundation for research in a new services business context by combining the established theory of RM with the emerging area of technology transfer. Building a thorough empirical basis for future research, the researchers anticipate the development of a comprehensive university‐industry relationship research stream.

Business services have an important role in the development of global knowledge‐base economy. This is particularly clear in the field of ICT services where business customers are requiring an increasing amount of complex services in order to support their utilization of advanced ERP, SCM and CRM solutions for boosting their business processes and competitive advantage. The complexity of these services and customers' requests for special adaptations form a critical challenge for service providers. This paper seeks to develop solutions for managing this complexity.

Three service design and development methods – service industrialization, tangibilization, and service blueprinting – are introduced and then analyzed as to how they can be utilized as an integrated system to reduce the complexity of ICT services. This is carried out through an action research‐based case study of an ICT service provider.

The results include a service architecture framework, which can be used for creating a modularized offering and implementation system for complex business services. It reduces the complexity of services while allowing their customer specific adaptation.

Key aspects are the identification of service modules and interfaces in a multi‐actor service offering setting and the providing of adequate resources for the design phase of the customized service project. This is essential in order to be able to simultaneously respond to customer specific needs and to reduce the number of existing technologies and overlapping functionalities, seemingly contra dictionary aims.

Findings of the paper offer significant theoretical and managerial implications for the design and production of complex business services.

The purpose of this article is to explore the possible negative asymmetric effects in the impact of service quality on the satisfaction and retention of different customer segments in a professional business services context. Negative asymmetry means that a lower than average service quality evaluation has a stronger effect on customer satisfaction and retention than a higher than average evaluation.

The article provides a survey of 124 business customers of a Midwestern radio advertising services provider, preceded by nine in‐depth interviews with account reps of the advertising firm and two focus groups with business customers.

Along the service quality dimensions – customer satisfaction – retention chain, there are significant negative asymmetric effects and the mediating role of satisfaction varies widely. There are important differences across customer groups: service outcomes are most important determinants of customer satisfaction for large and relatively newer accounts; functional quality dimensions (empathy) are most important factors for small and relatively mature accounts.

Surveying customers of one organization in one industry reduces the generalizability of the findings. The study employed only two segmentation variables, while many other variables could be investigated. The focus is on the asymmetric effects of service quality; other factors, such as costs, were not considered.

Managers should invest resources in improving low performance in the service quality dimensions with strongest impact on customer satisfaction and highest negative asymmetry. The identified segment differences suggest the need to achieve strong results for large accounts and relatively new accounts. The customer relationship is most important for small accounts and relatively mature accounts. Maintaining service reliability is critical for small and new account retention.

This study is a first effort to explore the differences in effects across service quality dimensions and customer segments in a professional business service context. The findings indicate that aggregating customers and the service quality measurement can offer misleading information to managers.

The purpose of the paper is to examine shifts in sales organizations utilized to sell services to business‐to‐business customers. The paper also examines the changes expected in personal selling and sales management.

Extant academic literature and emerging practices are examined to determine trends.

The paper suggests that the traditional service‐focused sales organization is evolving in two distinct directions. First, enhanced sales automation is resulting in a reduction in salespeople's contact with customers. Second, an enhancement in the level of customer contact is leading to a growth of customer‐focused sales organizations and an increase in global account management teams.

Additional research is needed in this area.

Changes are required in the manner in which personal selling and sales management is practiced in organizations. Firms need to make these changes or their sales forces will be less efficient and less effective.

This important area is very infrequently examined in literature. This is the first attempt to examine this area.

The objectives of this paper are twofold: to add to the debate regarding conceptualisation and operationalisation of value within a professional service domain, and to contribute to the relatively sparse literature dealing with the functional relationship between determinants and outcomes of value with specific emphasis on the value to satisfaction and intention to re‐purchase relationship in professional services.

A theoretically grounded model has been developed that comprises three antecedents of value (conceptualised as a higher order construct of six dimensions) and satisfaction both of which impact on intention. The model has been tested, using partial least squares, on 78 responses obtained through an email survey carried out amongst executives of the top 300 UK‐based companies listed in the Times 1,000.

The results indicate that although perceived value is a multi‐dimensional construct treating value as a unified construct may lead to confounding effects. Although further research is needed it is suggested that different dimensions of value act at different levels of the value hierarchy and differentially reflect process and outcome value creation forces in professional services.

This paper adds to the debate surrounding conceptualisations of the value construct by offering empirical support as to its formative nature. Furthermore, this is the first attempt to examine differences in the nomological relationships of value when it is treated as a single higher order construct and when the higher order structure of value is relaxed allowing its dimensions to directly interact with antecedents and consequences.

The purpose of this paper is to develop a deeper understanding of customer service/service quality in business‐to‐business contexts.

An in‐depth case study was used to discover the perceptions of both key individuals in the supplying company and key customers.

The paper shows that that customer service/service quality in a business‐to‐business context is a complex and multifaceted issue, the different parties in a relationship have differing perceptions of what constitutes service quality and that actors from the wider network can have an impact on perceptions of service quality.

This work is tentative in nature so it is not possible to generalise the findings to a wider context. However, it suggests that this area needs much more detailed and in‐depth investigation.

Managers need to be aware of the complexity of customers' service quality perceptions in a business‐to‐business context. They must consider dynamics, actions of other actors and how best to demonstrate their expertise and experience.

The findings of this research, although only exploratory, are significant because they are one of the few pieces of research into business‐to‐business service quality in which perceptions of quality from both sides of the dyad are collected and analysed.