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Project business as a mode of operation is currently very prevalent on international business-to-business markets, and project-related services are an important part of most projects. However the way to market these types of services is under-researched in mainstream marketing literature. Therefore, via a multi-lingual literature review, this article scrutinizes four marketing schools for frameworks relevant to the marketing of project-related services: project, services, transaction, and interactive business-to-business marketing. The analysis shows that the project marketing concepts better capture key aspects of marketing project-related services internationally than do the mainstream service marketing concepts. However, the analysis also suggests that a pluralist approach may be useful when marketing of project-related services, as some frameworks from other marketing schools are also suitable. On this basis, suggestions for marketers of project-related services are presented, and a research agenda for academics concerning the study of project-related services both internationally and domestically is suggested.

After reviewing the literature focused on real-world course–client marketing projects as well as the literature regarding teaching entrepreneurial marketing (EM), the current paper assesses a census population (N = 106) of course–client projects selected by the current author via Riipen – an online course–project matching hub – for marketing courses taught from Spring 2018 through Spring 2023. The purpose of this paper is to uncover and explore the degree of EM teaching relevance of said course projects over the five-year span indicated.

All Riipen-sourced course–client projects selected by the current author for marketing courses taught from Spring 2018 through Spring 2023 (N = 106) were reviewed so that broad project-level and firm-level characteristics and trends – especially EM relevance – could be excavated and assessed over the five-year/10-semester span. In addition, an in-depth qualitative primacy-recency/bookend approach was taken with regards to the first semester (Spring 2018) and the most recent semester (Spring 2023).

The main finding is that Riipen-sourced course–client projects exhibited an increasingly high degree of EM relevance between Spring 2018 through Spring 2023. Project representatives at the founder/co-founder level or the equivalent made up only 20% of the pool in Spring 2018 yet constituted slightly over 94% of the pool by Spring 2023. Similarly, whereas only 33% of firms sourced and selected in Spring 2018 were in startup mode, fully 100% of firms selected in Spring 2023 were in startup mode.

The population of 106 Riipen-sourced-and-selected course–client projects do not represent a statistically valid basis for “apples-to-apples” comparisons because: the population of projects was spread across multiple courses and across multiple semesters over a five-year span where many shifts and trends were ongoing – including impacts to course-delivery modality due to COVID-19, and it is likely that unconscious idiosyncratic biases of the current author were operant during selection. Moving forward, researchers are encouraged to pursue questions such as the following: are there statistically significant EM-related learning outcomes that differ for students paired to projects that vary across the preliminary project taxonomy detailed?

Many practical teaching recommendations regarding effective ways to source, select and integrate high-EM course–client projects into otherwise standard-issue marketing courses are made. The paper also serves as something of a primer on how best to source and adapt Riipen marketing projects. Cautionary teaching notes and recommendations based on the current author’s observations are also shared.

Over the course of the five-period (Spring 2018 through Spring 2023), it was observed that a rapidly increasing percentage of firms on the Riipen platform self-identified as female-owned, minority-owned and/or LGBTQ-owned. Similarly, a moderately increasing percentage of marketing projects with “social entrepreneurship” and/or “social impact” and/or “environmental impact” elements were posted to the platform.

To the best of the author’s knowledge, this is the first peer-reviewed journal article to explore the EM value of real-world course–client marketing projects sourced via Riipen.

The purpose of this paper is to identify the marketing practices adopted by contractors in project-based industries to win new business and maintain relationships with existing clients.

The authors interviewed eight such contractors, and used activity theory as a lens to analyze the results. The authors investigated project marketing activities at four stages of the project contract life cycle, and against four enablers of collaboration.

The authors have identified that the service-dominant logic pervades project marketing. Through the project contract life cycle the marketing activity starts with a strategic focus, becomes tactical, then operational and returns to strategic. Project marketing involves executive managers, marketing, client or account managers and project managers. Project managers have a key responsibility for project marketing. The four enablers of collaboration, relationships, communication, going-with and trust, support each other and the entire project marketing activity.

As a contribution to theory, the authors have identified the practices adopted by contractors in project-based industries to market their competencies to clients to win new work and maintain relationships with existing clients. The authors have identified practices throughout the contract life cycle, and practices to develop collaboration. The next step will be to explain these practices in terms of traditional marketing theory.

The results provide guidelines to contractors in project-based industries who wish to improve their marketing activity to achieve sustainable performance. Industry may also find it useful to train or coach their project managers to be conscious of their marketing role.

Previous work has been conceptual in nature and has speculated on the nature of the project marketing performed by contractors to win new projects, and set it against marketing done by the project. This research has empirically investigated the actual marketing practices adopted by project contracting organizations, shown how it varies through the project life cycle and shown how responsibility passes from senior management to the account team and then to project managers. It has also investigated the application of the four enablers of collaboration: relationships, communication, going-with and trust.

The purpose of this paper is to contend that one way to advance the social marketing discipline is by introducing students to social marketing concepts during the early stages of their marketing education. Thus, it describes an interdisciplinary group Social Marketing Plan (SMP) project that was included as a class project in an introductory marketing course. An analysis of the SMP's impact on student learning is presented.

Foundations of Marketing (Foundations) students at a US university completed an SMP project as a course requirement. Project impact was assessed with post‐project measures of students' ability to apply social marketing concepts in a SMP. Project impact was also assessed with post‐project measures of attitudes toward working on interdisciplinary teams and pre‐ and post‐project comparisons of declarative marketing knowledge, environmental awareness, environmental attitudes, and environmental intentions. A post hoc comparison of the commercial marketing knowledge of a control group and Foundations students was also conducted.

End of semester surveys showed that Foundations students understood and were able to apply social marketing concepts, enjoyed the SMP project, appreciated the value of working in interdisciplinary teams, and believed that future SMP projects should include students from other disciplines. Foundations students also reported significant increases in environmental awareness, attitudes, and intentions, and commercial marketing knowledge. Contrasts with a control group revealed that adding social marketing concepts to an introductory marketing course did not impede Foundations students' learning of commercial marketing concepts.

The paper provides evidence that incorporating a social marketing project into an introductory marketing course is an effective method for introducing students to social marketing concepts, therefore advancing the social marketing discipline. Changes in student environmental attitudes and intentions to act to preserve the environment also suggest that a SMP project can be an effective method of doing social marketing.

Project marketing is the specific activity of companies selling projects-to-order. Interpersonal practice is known to be important in this type of marketing. While this interpersonal practice has been little studied, some previous research suggests that changes in the institutional macro environment have affected it. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to study today’s interpersonal practice in project business and how the institutional environment conditions it.

Semi-structured interviews were conducted with marketing managers at project-based firms in different business sectors in France and Sweden. Data collection and analysis was informed by grounded theory.

The paper identifies three types of interpersonal practice in project marketing, referred to as the transactional, the work-based and the socializing. Changes in these are explained in relation to the three institutional logics identified in the data: the market institutional logic of business ethics, the corporate institutional logic of rationalization and the family institutional logic of gender equality.

Future studies can continue and broaden this work as it regards how the institutional conditioning of interpersonal practice varies with context.

By clearly categorizing the three types of interpersonal practice and their relative role today, companies can orient the activities of salespeople, business developers and other project marketers.

The paper highlights how business ethics and gender equality have changed interpersonal practices in project marketing.

The paper contributes to the current debate on project marketing by identifying three types of interpersonal practice and by illustrating how institutional logics condition and change these. The paper shows that extra-business activities are needed less than previous research has argued with regard to maintaining customer relationships in-between projects.

Project operations are a dominating mode of international business. Managing relationships and networks is crucial to project marketing success both at the level of the individual project and at the level of multiple projects. This article first defines key characteristics of project business, identifies potentially relevant actors in the project marketing milieu, and emphasizes the importance of constantly nurturing project business relationships, also in “sleeping relationship” periods where concrete projects are not expected. Thereafter the points made are illustrated with a Finnish‐Chinese turnkey project case at the level of the individual project and a Danish‐German professional service project case at the level of multiple projects. It is concluded that project managers and marketers should focus their attention on the management of project relationships before, during, and after projects, as well as on relevant environmental factors in the project marketing milieu, instead of using resources on sporadic or last minute running after potential projects.

The purpose of this paper is to place project marketing within the framework of organizational project management. There has been an ongoing discussion in the project marketing literature about whether project marketing is part of project management or project management is part of project marketing. Marketing is done by organizations to create a demand for products or services that have value for customers. The authors identify three types of organization involved in the management of projects, the project, the initiator and the contractor, and review current thinking on how they market their products and services, and create networks and dialogs to bring value to stakeholders.

The authors review the literature on project marketing, and develop new models based on an organizational perspective. The authors develop propositions as a basis for further research.

Marketing is done by three types of organization. The authors label these as marketing BY the project, marketing FOR the project by the contractor, and marketing OF the investment made by the project by the investor. The authors draw links with marketing theory, and introduce the service-dominant logic as a new perspective on organizational project marketing.

Traditionally, project marketing theory has taken the perspective of the overlap between project management and project marketing. The authors take an organizational perspective, and identify avenues for research into how the types of organization involved in the management of projects create dialog with their customers and stakeholders to exchange products and services that have value for them.

Project managers have not traditionally viewed project marketing as having relevance to them. The authors show that providing a service to stakeholders is an essential part of the management of projects.

The authors develop directions for research into project marketing as part of organizational project management.

This study aims to focus on a specific project marketing concept, i.e. “discontinuity,” and analyzes how this concept emerged in project marketing, becoming its key scholarly embodiment, how it became decoupled from the increasingly service-intensive project business practice and what the relevance of discontinuity is for project marketers moving forward.

This study is built on a systematic literature review of 31 years (1993–2023) of publishing data from major marketing and management journals.

This study provides three findings. First, the author reveals the risks related to marketing scholars and practitioners losing sight of each other as business practices evolve much faster than scholarly research can keep up. Second, the author highlights the role of interdisciplinary collaboration in advancing conceptual innovations. Finally, the research elucidates the need for broader metatheoretical reflection to keep this research tradition on an upward trajectory.

The aim of this study is not to criticize project marketing, as many strands of business-to-business (B2B) marketing face the same challenge, but to elucidate a need for conceptual innovations, collaboration with practitioners and other disciplines and broader metatheoretical reflection to keep this research tradition on an upward trajectory.

This study makes several contributions to the project marketing research tradition. First, it reviews the emergence and dissipation of the concept of discontinuity, drawing on semantical, etymological and epistemological insights. It also reflects on recent disruptions in the marketplace and envisions future research trajectories for this elusive concept. In addition, the author develops a conceptual framework that combines project types with exchange elements in project and service businesses. This conceptual framework helps elucidate what part of the exchange is continuing and what is discontinuing in the resulting business relationships. Furthermore, the research contributes to B2B marketing more broadly by highlighting the fleeting correspondence between theory and the real world. It underscores the need for constant updates to maintain relevance.

The gaps between what is taught in the classroom and what is required from the management graduates are evident globally. This research suggests that experiential learning has the potential to address this pronounced gap and examines the impact of a long-term experiential learning project in marketing curricula on management graduates in emerging Indian economy. This paper aims to investigate whether experiential learning results in conceptual clarity and application skills, influence positive behavioral change in the students and at the same time make learning an enjoyable and productive experience for management graduates.

This paper examines the results of a full-term long experiential learning project designed for the graduate students of the introductory marketing course in the emerging economy of India. The assessment of the experiential learning project was undertaken by using a 14-item survey instrument post activity and analyzed results by using quantitative methods.

The results of the study indicate that incorporation of experiential learning project in marketing curricula offers an excellent opportunity for the educators to ensure a high level of engagement, involvement, motivation, interest and satisfaction among Indian students. The project led to more enjoyment and productivity as compared to regular lecture method and assignments. The project provided an opportunity to apply theoretical concepts and theory in a real-life setting.

This activity is ideal and relevant for marketing educators who are looking for a semester/term long experiential learning activity/group project to be conducted while teaching introduction to marketing course. This activity offers an excellent opportunity for educators to ensure that students are engaged, motivated and are ready to apply the marketing concepts. This activity can be used in both undergraduate- and graduate-level courses.

“Marketing Challenge,” a long duration (full-term) experiential learning project described in this paper, provides the students an opportunity to experience the new product development process from the product conception, development to selling the developed product. The authors perceive that in the coming future, educators will use experiential learning elements in the classrooms to achieve the learning outcomes of various management courses.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the antecedents of project creativity in international marketing teams. The proposed framework includes both proximal (characteristics that impact the everyday functioning of the team) and distal (characteristics associated with the team's organizations that are relatively remote to the everyday functioning of the team) factors as antecedents of project creativity. Specifically, the authors investigate the influence of three proximal factors, namely, collaboration with foreign counterparts, autonomy, and international experience as well as two distal factors, namely, organizational encouragement and innovative organizational culture.

Data were collected from 156 executives from publicly traded firms in the manufacturing sector in South Korea and tested using hierarchical regression.

Collaboration with foreign counterparts and autonomy exert direct positive influence on project creativity. International experience exerts a curvilinear relationship such that low and high levels of international experience positively influence project creativity, whereas moderate international experience negatively influences project creativity. In addition, whereas the relationship between organizational encouragement and project creativity was supported, the relationship between innovative culture and project creativity was not.

Despite the importance afforded to international marketing teams and creativity in marketing research and practice, little attention has focussed on project creativity in international marketing teams. This study represents an initial effort toward filling the void and identifying certain proximal and distal factors as relevant antecedents of project creativity in international marketing teams. In addition, deviating from extant studies on creativity, this study highlights a curvilinear relationship between international experience and creativity.