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The paper seeks to provide a conceptual model of the account management process that isolates the social connections of more versus less effective account managers.

The sales performance research tradition is reviewed and a social network perspective is offered to explore the web of internal working relationships that account managers activate to acquire customer and competitor information and create solutions for customers.

Available evidence suggests that network size, network range, and network diversity are among the relational properties that may influence account manager performance. By building a strong network of relationships both within the firm as well as within the customer organization, high‐performing account managers, compared with their peers, are better able to diagnose customer requirements, mobilize internal experts, and choreograph the activities that are required to out‐maneuver rivals and create the desired customer solution.

The information‐acquisition practices of high‐performing account managers provide a template for improving customer relationship management (CRM) systems and processes.

The paper demonstrates the value of a social network perspective in advancing knowledge of account manager performance.

The most significant event for the School has been the announcement of the creation of the National Centre for Management Research and Development. The Centre is due to open in 1986 and will provide research facilities for up to 20 major projects designed to improve the competitiveness of Canadian business practices.

This paper aims to propose and test an exploratory model, illustrating performance differences based on underlying role identities and attributions of salespeople in business markets.

The sample consists of 60 salespeople from a Fortune 100 high technology firm responsible for managing multi‐million dollar customer projects. Interviews with both salespeople and their sales managers provided the data to examine the relationships among role identities, attributions, and performance.

The model suggests that higher‐performing salespeople have role identities as sales consultants, whereas lower performers tend to have role identities as technical specialists. Further, those salespeople with sales consultant role identities were more likely to attribute success to relational factors, whereas salespeople with technical specialist role identities were more likely to attribute success to technical factors. There were no significant relationships among role identities and attribution type in unsuccessful customer engagements.

While multiple sources of data were obtained from both salespeople and sales managers, all the respondents were from one large multinational organization.

The link between role identity and attributions provides opportunities for situation‐based sales training programs, and sheds new light on performance differences among salespeople.

The paper isolates role identity as a potential driver of salesperson performance.

This paper explores the causes of political intervention in foreign firms' operations and provides a framework for the development of risk reducing strategies. Specific suggestions for the management of the political environment in host countries are presented. Developing strategically appropriate responses for reducing political risk sustains a firm through periods of uncertain environmental development and helps it maintain its competitive market position.

Discusses the ever increasing sophistication of buyers in today′s industrial market and the need for sales people who have an in‐depth knowledge of their customers′ products and are able to liaise effectively between their own manufacturing department and the purchasing agent. Considers the establishment ofsales centres and the use of salespeople as intermediaries, coordinating the company′s sales functions (e.g. R&D, sales support), with their counterparts in the buying organization. concludes that salespeople can be viewed as the “linchpin” of the selling process, before, during and after the contract is completed.

Creates a framework for evaluating the marketing strategy dimensions of remanufacturing. Discusses resource recapture and how diffusion theory may be applied to the adoption of the remanufacturing/remarketing concept. Concludes that the diffusion of renovation will depend on the right firms having the right motivations to adopt the concept of remanufacturing/remarketing.

Describes an empirical study examining the strategies of auto parts suppliers to transplanted Japanese OEMs. Finds that suppliers have become more customer‐focused, following the marketing concept, and also more aggressive in buying from second tier suppliers, in accordance with reverse marketing. Examines the background to the growth of Japanese OEMs in North America, together with an analysis of the traditional marketing concept, reverse marketing and the Japanese hierarchical structure of suppliers. Concludes that reverse marketing leads to strong partnerships, and that relationships with both existing and new suppliers must be developed. Relates the research to the oretical concepts and offers managerial recommendations.

In the 1930s, American federal and state governments legislated explicitly in favor of the small retailer. But since the war it has been the indirect legislation which has had the most impact on the balance between large and small retailers — especially in such areas as trading hours, social policies such as public subsidies for suburban highway construction, and the relaxed attitude by the Federal Trade Commission towards mergers of retail multiples. Even some of the legislation that apparently imposes burdens on large‐scale retailing may ultimately be to its advantage.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the underlying knowledge structure and evolution of industrial-buying research published between 1965 and 2015.

Bibliometric analysis is performed on 357 relevant papers (using principal component analysis and natural language processing, using VantagePoint® tools, used to generate bubble maps, auto-correlation maps and Aduna cluster maps), demonstrating how various factors involved in industrial buying have evolved, their degree of correlation with each other and the interrelationships of multiple factors concerning their co-occurrences.

The systematic mapping of industrial-buying research would illustrate the development of the significant factors in industrial-buying research. This paper provides both a global perspective on the leading countries and journals in the field and a robust roadmap for further investigation in this field.

This paper is limited to the data considered for analysis and may, therefore, overlook or underestimate some work that has not been captured while filtering databases related to industrial buying.

This paper facilitates near-future projection and trend analysis in industrial-buying research.

The methodology used is unique to the field of business-to-business marketing.

Somewhere along the line marketers got off track, especially at the academic level. At its core, the discipline is one of persuasion and influence. Yet the concept of power is conspicuously absent from most works on the nature of the marketing effort. That's a hit like trying to teach skydiving by ignoring gravity. Sometimes the results are also similar, in dealing with policy and strategy. The author provides a brief history of the demise of the power concept in marketing and offers a contextual argument for its inclusion as a central tenet of the discipline's conceptual core.