Innovation in Business-to-Business Marketing

Prelude – overview and impetus for this colloquium-based thematic issue

Unprecedented advances in the pace of information and communication technologies have transformed how B-to-B firms approach their markets and conduct business (Gupta and Woodside 2006). As a result, new business models are adopted by B-to-B firms from a wide variety of industries, e.g. banking, insurance, consultancies, transport, advertising and marketing agencies, and e-retailing industry. For example, Amazon, initially a B-to-C firm, has become a platform for the sale of goods from other suppliers, as well as a cloud-services platform used by many banks. Such innovation in B-to-B marketing translates a shift in a firm’s vision, mission, strategies, technological prowess and market performance (Simmons, Palmer, and Truong 2013).

To-date, B-to-B research has examined the success factors for B-to-B firms, but with less attention being paid to innovation per se in B-to-B marketing (Aarikka-Stenroos et al. 2017). This has resulted in limited knowledge of the new business models adopted by B-to-B firms as well as their B-to-B marketing strategy, and this could affect the theory and practice of B-to-B marketing (Rodriguez 2016). The need to address innovation in B to B marketing provides the topical basis for this issue of the Journal of Business to Business Marketing.

Against this background, the development of this issue is inspired by both the aforementioned advances and incubated at the 4th Academy of Marketing B-to-B Marketing Colloquium organized in Bournemouth, UK, 6th October 2017. This issue in “Innovation in Business to Business Marketing,” itself an innovation was developed further and primarily by Nektarios Tzempelikos (Anglia Ruskin University, Lord Ashcroft International Business School) and Kaouther Kooli (Bournemouth University, Business School) in tandem with JBBM guidelines and Editorial guidance over most of 2018. And, as a result, seven (7) articles discussing the latest thinking about aspects of innovation in business-to-business marketing are presented. Specifically, the main objective was to continue the dialogue on how innovations can be embedded in B-to-B marketing practices and how to make research focusing on this topic more relevant and rigorous. We next elaborate on the specifics of these articles herein.

At this point, we would like to express appreciation to David Lichtenthal, Journal of Business-to-Business Marketing Editor for welcoming this idea and for kindly allowing us to develop it and co-editing based on the community of scholars that assembled at 4th Academy of Marketing B-to-B Marketing Colloquium organized in Bournemouth, UK, 6th October 2017. Their participation and engaging on these innovation matters were paramount. After all, the birth of commercial education itself can be legitimately traced to England and several countries in Europe (Backhaus 2015; Baker 2015) with rollout to the States, Canada and Asia then and beyond (Lichtenthal, Tzempelikos, and Tellefsen 2018, 41–42).

And, as the readers of this journal may recall the JBBM had a dedicated issue on “Internet Integration into Business Markets” (https://www.tandfonline.com/toc/wbbm20/11/1-2?nav=tocList). Those eight (8) papers in 2004 were among the earliest attempts within B to B literature to better understand and explain internet and web-based resources impacting tactical marketing building that theme made by (Lichtenthal and Eliaz 2003; Sharma 2002; Sharma and Sheth 2004) and many others at that time with their work across the business marketing mix. This issue takes similar slant (Lichtenthal 2004) and structure for examining internet and web-based impact on innovation while reflecting on those earlier papers as extant literature or as backdrop. In fact, Bill Cohen, Publisher of the Haworth Press had called upon all his Editors to have special issues involving internet impact on the domain and subject matter of their respective journal titles as the new millennium was getting underway.

We begin with Suraksha Gupta, Michael Czinkota, and Sena Ozdemir’s article “Innovation in Sustainability Initiatives through Reverse Channels”. The authors focus on an important notion, reverse channels, which represent an innovation in sustainability initiatives that uses the channel-based business function as a closed loop supply chain. The authors examine the role played by a brand in creating value for business customers through the adoption of reverse channels by presenting a research agenda in the form of a conceptual framework. The research agenda discussed in this paper is based on the argument that a brand provides an assurance of the quality and functional capability of the products to new users of old products, delivers rational benefits to business customers, and strengthens the customer base of manufacturers. The findings suggest that a brand can enhance customer equity, growth of the business customer and profits of the business customer by increasing in its efforts to influence the adoption of reverse-channels.

This article is followed by “What drives B-to-B marketers in emerging countries to use social media sites?” by Kaouther Kooli, Nektarios Tzempelikos, Pantea Foroudi, and Seif Mazahreh. Building on the argument that B-to-B marketers in emerging countries still lag behind compared to peers in developed countries in terms of the use of social media sites, the study explores the factors influencing the use of social media sites by B-to-B firms in emerging countries. The authors test their hypotheses on 158 firms in Jordan by means of structural equation modeling. Perceived usefulness, perceived utility, and result demonstrability were found to significantly influence the intention to use social media. However, perceived usability of social media sites did not have any influence on B-to-B marketers’ intention to use those sites.

Tim Hughes and Mario Vafeas contribute the third article titled “Marketing agency/client service-for-service provision in an age of digital transformation”. Their work represents an interesting effort to use insights from the Service-Dominant Logic (S-D Logic) theory to explore changes in agency/client value co-creation, at a time when digital transformation is having a major impact on the marketing communications process. Building on empirical data from clients and their agencies, the authors found that while much digital marketing appears to have initially been provided externally there seems to be a trend to bring these aspects of service in-house. The views of clients and agencies on their relationship, as being either transactional or a partnership, appear to be related to the degree of service required and provided.

The next article is by Len Tiu Wright, Robin Robin, Merlin Stone, and Eleni Aravopoulou. In “Adoption of Big Data Technology for Innovation in B2B Marketing” they develop a conceptual framework, supported by four case studies, to explore the use of big data in innovation and market leadership in B-to-B relationships. The study shows that organizations are recipients of and are collectors of big data, partly created by the increasing volume of business and customer transactions online. In addition, big data and its analytics and applications can be taken as indicators of organizations’ ability to innovate to respond to market opportunities. The study highlights the role of big data in business innovation, specifically in B-to-B organizations and where their innovation can transform customer experience at the end of the value chain, i.e. with final consumers.

The fifth article titled “Mobile tech: Superfood or super fad of creative business?” by Elvira Bolat. Bolat investigates the mobile technology deployment and its role in innovation practices of creative B-to-B firms. Based on empirical data from business decision-makers from the 31 UK creative B-to-B agencies, the study shows that mobile technology is in fact a superfood that with the right combination of resources and capabilities delivers strategic benefits for creative B-to-B businesses. It is the interaction between mobile technology resources and mobile technology capabilities to stimulate and facilitate process and product innovation practices. The study signals that business decision-makers can deploy mobile technology to effectively manage operations or/and produce new solutions.

The sixth article is titled “Co-creating with intermediaries: Understanding their power and interest” by Nathalia Tjandra, John Ensor, and John Thomson. Employing a case study approach, the study aims to explore the role of independent financial advisers (IFAs) in co-creation activities and identifies how their power and interest can be used to determine their level of involvement in co-creating innovation of new products and services in the financial services sector. The findings of this study indicate that independent intermediaries, such as IFAs, have a significant influence on the end customers’ view on financial services brands and they partially construct the provider’s brand value which is perceived and received by the end customers.

The final article in this dedicated issue is titled “Evaluating constitutive dimensions of CSR e-communication: A comparison between ‘Business-to-Business’ and ‘Close-to-Market’ companies” and is contributed by Maria Palazzo, Agostino Vollero, Pantea Foroudi, and Alfonso Siano. The authors explore the role of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) communication in B-to-B firms. Through a content analysis research design, the study explores how companies communicate on corporate websites their CSR efforts, applying a four-dimensional model. The study indicates that Business-to-Business (B-to-B) companies are more prone than Close-to-Market (C2M) organizations to be engaged in the disclosure both of CSR orientation (i.e. how their value statements reflect their commitment to sustainability) and structure (i.e. how they communicate their governance structure and certifications of CSR and how they engage with stakeholders). The study points out the constitutive dimensions and the diverse motivations that can push companies to adopt specific approaches in CSR disclosure.

Interlude

What we found mostly in common in this set of articles is that the innovative process has changed from individual (person or organization) innovator to innovation involving multiple (people or firms) innovators cooperatively. We have only just begun with embedding both.

A key message that emerges is that firms should leverage their own capabilities (e.g. managerial learning, knowledge acquisition capability) to play up their strengths to overcome many institutional constraints to enhance innovation and successfully introduce product/service changes to the marketplace.

This collection of articles also contributes to a better understanding of B-to-B problems, and the marketing concerns of practitioners and industry as per Rodriguez (2016) call, and shed light to innovation in B-to-B research by providing a broad look at issues that deserve more attention from practitioners and academic researchers. In addition, this issue provides some directions for future research to explore more deeply and thus advance our field.

Looking forward, we would like to see more research in this area focusing specifically on the role of organizational support (or barriers) and firm capabilities and how their interplay can help firms competing in the marketplace by creating innovative products/services, and associated processes.

Consortium-based approaches are a viable manner for scholars to advance their thinking for practice and knowledge creation, uttered a one.

We hope the readers will enjoy the reading and gaining insights there in!