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Technology-enabled business-to-business (B2B) services contribute the largest share to GDP growth and are fundamental for an economy’s value creation. This article aims to identify key service- and digital technology-driven B2B innovation modes and proposes a research agenda for further exploration.

This conceptual paper adopts a techno-demarcation view on service innovation, encompassing three core dimensions: service offering (the service product, or the “what”), service process (the “how”) and service ecosystem (the “who/for whom”). It delineates the implications of three digital technologies – the internet-of-things (IoT), intelligent automation (IA) and digital platforms – for service innovation across these core dimensions in B2B markets.

Digital technology has immense potential ramifications for value creation by reshaping all three core dimensions of service innovation. Specifically, IoT can transform physical resources into reconfigurable service products, IA can augment and automate a rapidly expanding array of service processes, while digital platforms provide the technical and organizational infrastructure for the integration of resources and stakeholders within service ecosystems.

This study suggests an agenda with six themes for further research, each linked to one or more of the three service innovation dimensions. They are (1) new recurring revenue models, (2) service innovation in the metaverse, (3) scaling up service innovations, (4) ecosystem innovations, (5) power dependency and lock-in effects and (6) security and responsibility in digital domains.

Economic theories applied to the study of buyer‐seller relationships draw to a large extent on the problems caused by specific investments. This contribution aims to develop a new perspective on specific investments that accounts for their value‐adding character and also to present a transaction‐centred definition of customer relationships.

The contribution draws on a comparative review on literature on business networks and economic theories focused on industrial buying behaviour.

Provides a transaction‐related definition of customer relationships in order to distinguish between different kinds of relationships and provides a framework to how relationship management is able to enhance marketing activities.

Specific investments are a powerful tool for differentiating the market offerings of a company. One central implication is for managers to realise on which stage of the market arena such differentiation is likely to be successful: transaction, relationship, segment or value network. This is the starting‐point for investing in a relationship portfolio conducive for the value generation of the company.

The paper shows that the value potential generated by specific investments is not fulfilled in the realms of present marketing literature. Also it is the first contribution to present a framework capable of treating phenomena of customer relationship management, relationship marketing and network marketing on the same footing, while still respecting the original motivations of those approaches.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the contribution of global business services (GBS) to improve productivity and economic growth of the world economy, which has gone largely unnoticed in service research.

The authors draw on macroeconomic data and industry reports, and link them to the non-ownership concept in service research and theories of the firm.

Business services explain a large share of the growth of the global service economy. The fast growth of business services coincides with shifts from domestic production toward global outsourcing of services. A new wave of GBS are traded across borders and have emerged as important drivers of growth in the world’s service sector.

This paper advances the understanding of non-ownership services in an increasingly global and specialized post-industrial economy. The paper makes a conceptual contribution supported by descriptive data, but without empirical testing.

The authors integrate the non-ownership concept and three related economic theories of the firm to explain the role of GBS in driving business performance and the international transformation of service economies.

Theories on industrial buying behavior differ fundamentally with regard to motivation and direction of industrial purchasing decisions. This becomes extremely in the case of new institutional economics, highlighting administrative aspects, and market process theory, focusing on entrepreneurial aspects of buying decisions. This paper aims to challenge these approaches by setting up an experimental design. Decisions of sales and purchasing managers were investigated with respect to their motivation of self‐protection or opportunity seeking.

The contribution is based on an experimental design. The design is based on a prospect theory scenario. Prospect theory states that successful economic agents show a stronger tendency towards self‐protection, whereas under‐performing economic agents are willing to bear greater risks in search for opportunities.

The results suggest that indeed out‐performers show a tendency to risk avoidance and under‐performers are willing to bear more risks. The most important implication is that new institutional economics‐based approaches to buying behavior are not universally valid. However, they apply to specific situations. In that respect the contribution shows a direction for the proper application of transaction cost‐based concepts.

Managers are advised to take the economic performance of their customer companies into account. Outperforming companies are more responsive to measures for self‐protection. Under‐performing customers may be more tolerant towards risk if it is compensated with the expectation of better opportunities.

The empirical research is new in so far as it is the first to apply a prospect theory framework to a business market environment. The results show clearly that the methodology, as originally applied in prospect theory, needs refinement when transferred to a business market context.

The authors propose to reply to the comment by Mario Rese on the article “The explanatory foundations of relationship marketing theory.”

This paper provides a critical analysis.

The comment of Rese has misspecified the major problems facing those firms adopting relationship marketing‐based strategies.

In order to find the answers as to why some relationship marketing efforts are successful and others are not, marketing managers must look at more than one research tradition.

This paper clarifies the eight types of factors that influence relationship marketing‐based strategy success.

In general, as part of the ongoing discussion about the importance of business partnerships in industrial markets, specifically the paper seeks to comment on the Hunt et al. paper in this issue.

Hunt et al. argue that one reason for the prominence of business relationships and therefore partnerships between OEMs and suppliers is the growing importance of network competition. Using the framework of transaction cost economics, the preconditions for a partnership‐oriented coordination of OEMs and suppliers within a value‐creating network are discussed.

It becomes obvious that not all types of suppliers are suitable for a partnership. Some are, some are not. This highlights that there is a need not only for a description of the potential drivers responsible for the existence and success of business relationships but also for hypotheses as to how the several identified drivers work and interact. Description is the first, but explanation must be the second step for giving managerial advices.

This paper is a comment on the article “The explanatory foundations for relationship marketing theory” by Hunt et al.

This case study sets out to draw a detailed picture of the business relationships between Gildemeister Lathes Ltd and its two competing in‐suppliers, Siemens and Heidenhain.

On the basis of a profound analysis of the relationship context and by identifying the drivers of commitment the reader should identify some starting‐points to develop a sales strategy in order to keep and raise Siemens' share of the business with Gildemeister.

The case study enables the discussion of customer value‐drivers within a relationship context and puts an emphasis on the assessment of a multi‐stage marketing‐approach focusing on different units within a complex customer organisation and taking into account the “customer's customer”‐perspective.

This paper provides a detailed case study of Gildemeister Lathes Ltd, Siemens, and Heidenhain.