Business Marketing Comes of Age A Comprehensive Review of The Literature
Business Marketing Comes of Age A Comprehensive Review of The Literature
Business Marketing Comes of Age A Comprehensive Review of The Literature
To cite this article: David A. Reid & Richard E. Plank (2000) Business Marketing Comes of Age: A
Comprehensive Review of the Literature, Journal of Business-to-Business Marketing, 7:2-3, 9-186,
DOI: 10.1300/J033v07n02_02
INTRODUCTION
The study of business marketing as a distinct subject matter has had a
surprisingly long history. For example, the first case book dealing with indus-
trial marketing was Copeland (1930) and an early textbook strictly on industri-
al marketing was Frederick (1934). Academic research on the subject was
relatively sparse until 1972 when Industrial Marketing Management was
introduced as a peer refereed journal specifically for industrial marketing.
Since that time academic research within the context of industrial and business
marketing has continued to progress. The last comprehensive review of the
field was Webster (1978a). Hence, the focus of this review is on industrial/
business marketing research which was published from 1978 through 1997.
Despite Fern and Browns (1984) challenge, industrial marketing, or busi-
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S how much progress has been made in understanding the nature of busi-
ness marketing,
S what specific areas of business marketing have been studied the most,
and
S how much progress has been made with respect to theory development
regarding the positive and normative dimensions of business marketing
practices?
was already a daunting task from becoming an impossible one. Thus, not all
possible publication sources were included in the database. Among those not
included were journals focusing on specialized areas such as logistics and
physical distribution, health care, public relations, direct marketing, and in-
ternational business. Difficulty in obtaining access to many of the overseas
publications also resulted in the work included in the database being primari-
ly from American publications. However, the database does include two of
the most prominent European journals, European Journal of Marketing and
International Journal of Research in Marketing. The large and growing number
of association proceedings also meant difficult choices had to be made. As can
be seen from Table 1, only the proceedings of the three largest U.S. marketing
groups plus the Society for Consumer Psychology were included. Books of
articles, as opposed to textbooks which were completely excluded, were also
entered on a selective basis. Included were books such as those representing
compilations of articles from various special academic business marketing meet-
ings and the Advances in Business Marketing series. Excluded were trade books
and articles from trade publications such as Business Marketing Magazine.
The review begins with a summary profile of the database which provides
information on the number of articles from each publication source, the
number of articles per year, and a descriptive breakdown of the articles in
terms of empirical versus non-empirical methodology, research design, and
major statistical techniques. Articles in the database were classified into
twenty-eight specific topics and the breakdown by topic is presented. For
12 JOURNAL OF BUSINESS-TO-BUSINESS MARKETING
discussion purposes within this article, the twenty-eight topics are grouped
into seven major topic areas. These seven major topic areas reflect those
major headings used in business marketing textbooks in discussing the sub-
ject. The categories are reported in the following order: business marketing
strategy, organizational buying behavior and purchasing management, mar-
keting sciences, product, pricing, distribution, and promotion. An assessment
of the major themes, major individual contributions, and future trends is
provided for each area. Suggestions for needed research for each area are also
provided.
TABLE 1. List of Reference Sources and Number of Entries and Year of First
Publication
Source n % Year
Association for Consumer Research Annual Conference 15 <1 1980
American Marketing Association Summer Educators Conference 80 3.6 1978
American Marketing Association Winter Educators Conference 19 <1 1989
Academy of Marketing Science Annual Proceedings 58 2.6 1978
Business Horizons 20 <1 1981
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Total 2194
Year indicates the first year the publication is used for the database. 1978 was the first possible
year, the latest is 1991, the year the Journal of Business-to-Business Marketing was first
published.
David A. Reid and Richard E. Plank 13
sumer Research and the annual proceedings of the Association for Consumer
Research did not contribute very many articles. The same was true for gener-
al business/managerially-oriented scholarly journals such as Business Hori-
zons, California Management Review, Harvard Business Review, and Sloan
Management Review.
Table 2 shows the number of articles by year published. The field of
business marketing, after having 104 articles published in 1978, experienced
a significant decline in the number of articles published for the years 1979
through 1984. Research activity increased in 1985, and has averaged over
125 articles per year for 1985-1997. As shown in Table 2, the peak years
during the period under review were 1997, with 170 articles, and 1990 with
167. It should be noted that 6 journals were all started during the time frame
of this review: International Journal of Research in Marketing, Journal of
Business-to-Business Marketing, Journal of Business and Industrial Market-
ing, Journal of Product Innovation Management, Journal of Personal Selling
and Sales Management, and Marketing Science. Hence, some of the more
recent increases in activity are, in part, because of increased opportunities for
publishing business marketing articles.
Table 3 provides a numerical summary of the database. Of the 2,194
articles, 1,288 are empirical in that they collected data and report the find-
ings. The remaining 906 are non-empirical articles and can be viewed as
falling into three broad categories: reviews, new or revised theoretical per-
spectives, and normative works aimed at managers. An overwhelming num-
ber of the non-empirical pieces were normative in nature. There was also a
14 JOURNAL OF BUSINESS-TO-BUSINESS MARKETING
Total 2194
Average per year 110
population for external validity purposes. Other than descriptive statistics, the
four most commonly used statistics were correlation (15.6%), parametric
regression (15%), analysis of variance (10%), and exploratory factor analysis
(10%). Structural equation modeling was used in 7.5% of the studies, with
many of those instances representing confirmatory factor analysis. The great
majority of structural equation modeling occurred after 1990. The all other
category in Table 3 consisted primarily of instances of the use of coefficient
alpha as a measure of internal consistency and other more specialized types
of analyses.
Scales were often used, but factor structures and other measures of scale
validity and reliability were not always reported in earlier articles, leaving the
reader to assume the scale performed as had been reported in previous re-
search. Recent articles, however, were more consistent in their reporting of
this information. Given recent advances in structural equation modeling and
the use of these techniques to ascertain measure validity this trend is likely to
continue.
Table 4 lists the number of articles by topic area. Each article was classi-
fied into a topical category with the possibility that an article could be in-
cluded in one, two, or three topic areas depending on the breadth of the article
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and its focus. A total of 240 articles fit into three topic areas, 797 articles had
a two topic area focus, and 1,157 articles were focused on a single topic.
Articles were assigned to a topical area using the following approach. In
compiling the database, each was read and examined by both of the authors as
well as graduate assistants. Each reader categorized each article and where
there was agreement, the article was entered into the agreed upon category(s).
When there was a lack of consensus, the authors met to examine the article
and resolve the issue.
As Table 4 shows, the most studied area was organizational buying behav-
ior with 448 articles followed by strategy and planning (332) and general
sales management (296). Other areas that had a fairly large number of articles
included new product management and development (255), purchasing man-
agement (253), and personal selling (242). The areas with the fewest articles
were public relations (9), marketing to government (11) and marketing ethics
(18). Other areas not well represented were logistics and physical distribution
(22), computers in business marketing (29), sales training (35), and forecast-
ing (38). In some cases the limited number of articles in an area may be due to
the existence of specialized journals for these topics (e.g., Journal of Logis-
tics and Physical Distribution and Journal of Forecasting), while in other
cases it may be that there is limited interest or the topic is perceived as not
being unique to business marketing. Since as previously noted, many special-
ized journals and proceedings were not included in the database, these areas
may be limited simply because of this.
David A. Reid and Richard E. Plank 17
A total of 130 articles had topic areas that could not be classified into the
existing database typology. These included some important new areas such as
internal marketing, quality, and generalized discussions of business market-
ing which did not readily fit any category.
In the sections that follow, the twenty-eight topic areas are grouped for
discussion purposes into seven research areas. This grouping is clearly one of
convenience, as with any such effort not everyone will agree with all of the
ment of the field and offers suggestions for needed research. For experienced
researchers with a defined focus in the field, it provides insights into areas
they may not be familiar with and identifies additional research opportunities.
MARKETING STRATEGY
We begin the review with the area of strategy and its associated topics.
This section is divided into the following categories: business market plan-
ning and strategy, international business marketing, marketing to govern-
ments, marketing and other functions, ethics, and general literature.
issues, such as suppliers and wholesalers, and therefore requires what they
call a network concept. In essence, Hakansson and Snehota (1990) state that
strategy needs to be developed from the perspective of the supply chain.
Their perspective of networks is similar to the Japanese concept of Keiretsu.
However, the culture of business in Japan is very different from most other
economies with respect to the relationships between firms and networks are
therefore likely to operate somewhat differently in western cultures. Network
marketing is examined in a book of readings edited by Iacobucci (1996). The
collected works in the Iacobucci text focus on defining the concept of net-
works, describing various network examples, and providing methodological
devices for doing research on networks. The new world order suggests that
network-linked organizations are the emerging organizational form. Berling
(1993) makes a similar case, arguing that what is emerging from a strategic
perspective is an emphasis on building relational advantages, partnerships,
alliances, and networks to further competitive advantage.
A number of other topics related to general strategic marketing have also
been addressed. For instance, Slater (1993) provides normative advice for
competing in what he calls high velocity markets, markets that change rapid-
ly. This is similar to what DAveni (1994) refers to as hypercompetitive
markets.
Taking a unique perspective, Barius (1994) discusses the use of the con-
cept of simultaneous engineering in marketing. He argues that many market-
ing activities can be done simultaneously, much as in engineering, to speed
20 JOURNAL OF BUSINESS-TO-BUSINESS MARKETING
the product to market and provides a case study as an example. Juttner and
Wehili (1994) argue for merging marketing thought with a competence-based
perspective. Borrowing from recent strategic management literature, the au-
thors frame the development of a competence-based marketing strategy mod-
el. Taking somewhat narrower perspectives, Polonsky (1995) provides an
argument for using stakeholders to define environmental strategy, while
Frankwick et al. (1994) examine the impact of organizational beliefs and
their changes on strategy formulation.
A great deal of the work in the strategy area has centered on portfolios and
their usage by business marketers. In an early example, Boyd and Headen
(1978) discussed the idea of defining and managing the product-portfolio.
Fiocca (1982) provides a discussion of account portfolios and Yorke and
Droussiotis (1994) provide an empirical study of usage from the perspective
of customer satisfaction. Finally, Turnbull (1990) provides a review article
examining the use of portfolio planning models in buyer-supplier relations.
Competitive intelligence usage and other perspectives on defining com-
petition have also attracted considerable attention. Zinkham and Gelb (1985)
provide an empirical examination of how business marketers practice com-
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One of the most influential pieces of research in this area is the modeling
work done by Choffray and Lilien (1978) on measuring industrial response.
Their model, consisting of four sub-models--awareness, acceptance, individu-
al evaluation, and group decision making--has generated a great deal of test-
ing within each submodel area.
Cressman (1995) provides an interesting framework for diagnosing market-
ing activities. The author argues that because many organizations are under
pressure to reduce costs the real risk they face is that personnel reductions and
other cost-cutting measures may significantly reduce competitiveness. The
author provides a process using value chain analysis to assess contributions of
marketing staff to adding value for the companys customers and thus tries to
ensure that cuts made in staff focus on only non-value adding activities.
Other contributions to the strategic literature include the many articles
which describe strategic issues in either a specific industry, company, or part
of the world (e.g., Hallen and Johnson 1985; Lamb 1990; Weinrauch et al.
1991). Within this area, high technology marketing has seen a number of
research contributions. They include Samli and Wills (1990) who provide a
general discussion of strategic issues in high technology marketing, MacInnis
and Heslop (1990) who provide a discussion of how to plan in a high technol-
ogy environment, and Traynor and Traynor (1989) who examine the market-
ing approaches used by high technology firms.
A classic article by Jackson (1985) provides an interesting discussion of
buyer-seller relationships and the notion of switching costs as an important
22 JOURNAL OF BUSINESS-TO-BUSINESS MARKETING
element in strategy development. Burger and Cann (1995) provide the only
explicit general discussion of post-purchase strategy in the literature, al-
though Samli, Jacobs, and Wills (1992) do provide a discussion of pre- and
post-sale services. These authors provide lists of about 7 different pre- and
post-sale services that are important in international business. For pre-sale
activities they include such activities and identifying key services, assisting
in international financing, and planning EDI systems. For post-sale activities
they include training, technical assistance, maintenance and repair and
suggestions to generally minimize post-sale risk.
Finally, there has also been limited discussion of the use of strategic
alliances. Examples of this work include Sethuraman, Anderson, and Narus
(1988) who used social exchange theory to examine the determinants of
partnership success and advantage, Bucklin and Sengupta (1993) who stud-
ied successful co-marketing alliances, and Walters, Peters, and Dess (1994)
who provided some guidelines for making alliances work.
quite uneven. A variety of issues have been examined but there is little
consensus on many issues and even less programmatic work. Most of the
work has tended to be conceptual in nature. Empirical work has been primari-
ly descriptive and has yielded some insight into how firms deal with some
aspects of strategy.
The work in the strategy literature reflects the tremendous changes that are
going on in the environment and how firms are dealing with them. Discus-
sions of strategic alliances and partnerships demonstrate the increase in these
kinds of arrangements that are occurring. Achrol (1991) argues that with an
increasingly turbulent environment the necessity for changes in organization-
al forms is a forerunner of changes in strategic orientation. Work on networks
and a broadened view of supply chain strategy have suggested new ap-
proaches to strategy and its formulation (Turnbull and Valla 1986; Hakansson
and Snehota 1990). The concepts of switching costs, which can be linked to
the work of Williamson (1979), and transactions costs also provide an impor-
tant thread for the practitioner as they can be used to think through strategic
issues as well as the obvious tactical usages of the concepts in focusing
marketing activities. As technology continues to play a more important role
in everyday life, high technology marketing will continue to be an important
context for both examining strategic as well as tactical issues. Measures of
marketing performance and models of strategic marketing response will
probably need to be reformulated to take into account networks as more and
more companies take this perspective in various industries.
The strategic planning literature as exemplified by work in such journals
David A. Reid and Richard E. Plank 23
responses and found attitudes varied across the industries and, as expected,
companies having more favorable attitudes toward exporting were generally
more successful. More recently, Axinn, Savitt, Sinkulu, and Thach (1995)
looked at the attitudes toward exporting of smaller industrial firms in a
longitudinal study. They found a relationship between export intentions on
the part of managers and their belief in its value. They did not, however, find
any relationship between export intentions and actual exporting practices.
The research addressing export attitudes in business may possibly reflect a
belief that business marketers attitudes are not all that different than those of
consumer goods marketers when it comes to exporting.
Among the other aspects of exporting that have been examined, Klein,
Frazier, and Roth (1990) used transactional cost theory to examine channel
integration in international markets, focusing on exporting. Bello and Ver-
hage (1989) defined the export tasks. They then looked at size and distance
factors and the impact of those factors on whether or not an exporter will
assign some export tasks to the middleman used in the process. As Bello and
Verhage (1989) expected, larger exporters do more tasks themselves relative
to the distance involved (the greater the distance, the more likely these tasks
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are done by the exporter). In general, exporters have a desire to control those
tasks which offset the higher costs of completing the tasks. From a normative
perspective, Seringhaus (1987) examined the practice of using trade missions
to assist in export market entry. Finally, Turnbull (1990), using the IMP case
format, studied the role of personal contacts in industrial export marketing.
His examination of primarily British companies found personal contacts to be
very important.
International strategy has also had only limited discussion in business
marketing literature. Dawson (1980) suggested a normative framework for
setting business marketing strategies within multinational settings. Dawson
identified five models of industrial development. He then suggests that com-
panies wishing to do business in a country must: align their strategies with the
nature of development in the country, be systemic in their approach, be
socially conscious, be adaptable, and have policies that reflect interregional
differences--and at the same time preserve national identity and culture.
Only two empirical papers have attempted to examine general strategic
performance. Fraser and Hite (1990) examined the general impact of strate-
gic orientation on performance in global markets using a sample of 110
medium size companies. They argue that their results suggest that the general
relationship of market share to profitability, identified in the PIMS studies, does not
appear to exist across international markets. But they note that marketing mix
variables of product, sales force, and advertising appear to be related to internation-
al performance. Samiee and Roth (1992) looked at the impact of marketing
David A. Reid and Richard E. Plank 25
countries into groups, something that has been done for years in the academic
literature, but their approach was to use the sourcing strategies to do the
clustering. What was not done, but might be interesting, is to compare sourc-
ing strategies of firms operating in specific countries with the development
level of that country, thus tying the idea of Dawson (1980) into this method-
ology. Schuster and Bodkin (1987) investigated exporters views of segmenta-
tion. Using a small sample of 68 respondents from the state of Virginia, they
found that 72% do differentiate between domestic and foreign in terms of
marketing mix, but only 22% differentiate between countries. This suggests
that the sophistication level of this sample was relatively low.
One of the more extensive streams of research in the international area of
business marketing has been countertrade. Shipley and Neale (1987) provide
an empirical examination of barter and countertrade activities. Using a UK
sample they found 57 companies out of 217 who responded from a sample
frame of 1000 who did countertrade. Of those 57, a total of 35 did interna-
tional countertrade, 22 did domestic countertrade and no companies did both.
Respondents reported the biggest benefit of countertrade was that it allowed
entry into difficult markets. The biggest drawback was companies often had
no use for the goods they had to take in countertrade deals. Okoroafo (1994),
on the other hand, provides a normative model for implementing counter-
trade. Palia and his colleagues (1992; 1993; Palia and Shenkar 1991; Palia
and Yoon 1994) have documented empirically countertrade practices, mostly
in Asian countries. Finally, Forker (1992) and Pearson and Forker (1995)
26 JOURNAL OF BUSINESS-TO-BUSINESS MARKETING
marketing systems in Japan; Oikawa and Tanner (1992) who examined the
impact of Japanese culture on business relationships with them; Wortzel
(1983) who examined marketing to developing Asian countries; Hill (1980)
who discussed doing business in Eastern Europe, Domenski and Guzeh
(1992) who examined organizational buying in Poland; and Mafi and Carr
(1990) who provided some guidelines for doing business in Iran. Other
research (Chang and Ding 1995; Davies, Leung, Luk, and Wong 1995) has
examined the impact of culture on organizational buying behavior of busi-
ness relationships in China. Work by Spekman (1991) examined U.S. buyers
relationships with suppliers from the Pacific Rim countries outlining some of
the problems of importing and negotiating with companies from this part of
the world. While in a slightly different twist, Banting, Beraco, and Gross
(1991) examined and compared organizational buying in capitalist versus
socialist states and found the process much different under state ownership.
From the European side of things, Roos, Veie, and Welch (1992) reported on
a case study of how equipment is purchased in Czechoslovakia while Dion
and Banting (1990) and Saghafi, Sciglimpaglia, and Withans (1995) ex-
amined empirically NAFTA and the EEC and the impact of those trade blocs
on business marketing activity.
There have also been a number of articles that have examined functional
issues as they relate to the international context with perhaps the most work
focusing on the purchasing area. For example, Carter and Narasimnan
(1990), Monczka and Trent (1991), Monczka and Trent (1992), and Hibbert
David A. Reid and Richard E. Plank 27
(1993) have all discussed some aspect of global sourcing. Empirical ex-
amination of various aspects of global sourcing have been done by Ford
(1984), Haugland (1990), Min and Gale (1991), Gulbro and Herbig (1995),
Levthesser, LaBahn, and Harich (1995), and Thorelli and Glowacka (1995).
This work points out the increasing importance of worldwide sourcing to
meet needs of what are increasingly global company operations. It also points
out the increased emphasis on global strategic orientation, even by companies
that would not be considered large multinationals. There have also been
many discussions of the cross cultural aspects of this type of work (e.g.,
Chiesl and Knight 1981; Chiesl and Knight 1985; Ghauri 1988; Kaynak
1989; and Kaynak and Kuchukemiroglu 1992). In general, this work points
out the problems associated with attempting to do global sourcing and the
general associated problems with a global strategic orientation.
There has also been a number of studies that have looked at specific
aspects of marketing activities. For example, both Cavusgil (1988) and
Weekly (1992) discuss issues with regard to pricing. Hill and Allaway
(1993), Samli, Wirth and Wills (1994), and Honeycutt and Ford (1995) all
discuss issues on managing sales forces. The use of trade shows has been
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This area has had almost no activity. There were just eleven references to
marketing to government buyers. Work has been done in bidding (Boughton
1994; 1997; Gordon and Welch 1978), market research for government mar-
kets (Vest 1986), the defense industry buying process (Schill 1980), and the
nature of competition in government procurement (Entrikin and Peterson
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1981). Other papers of note include Goretsky (1986), who provides advice on
market planning for government procurement and Sheth, Williams, and Hill
(1983), who discuss general similarities and differences between government
and business procurement. Despite a lack of research on selling to the gov-
ernment, there are a number of books available to interested readers that may
generate some possible research avenues. Among these are Bauer (1994),
Sullivan (1997), Worthington, Goldsmith, and contra-Alston (1998), Estell
(1991), and Fishner (1989).
Given the importance of governmental agencies to business markets, there
are many interesting questions that could and should be examined. Included
among these are:
marketing and other functional areas such as R&D, production, and engineer-
ing. A significant proportion of the work in this area has centered on the
relationship between marketing and R&D. The second deals with the pur-
chasing function and its role with engineering, manufacturing, and in new
product development. The final group addresses the notion of cross function-
ality in general.
The notion of the interface between marketing and R&D is an old one. For
example, a classic work by Berenson (1968) examined this issue in detail,
specifically developing a model to assist in the transfer of R&D findings to
the marketplace. He suggested four organizational mechanisms: project team,
product manager, functional grouping of resources, and some combination of
these as the means for an organization to structure its operations to improve
the R&D interface and ultimately the transfer of R&D to the marketplace.
Souder (1981) provided empirical evidence of the disharmony between
marketing and R&D. An empirical piece by Gupta and Wilemon (1988)
examined the idea of credibility leading to cooperation in the R&D/market-
ing interface. Using a small sample (17 firms), Moenaert and Souder (1990)
studied the use of external information by both R&D and marketing person-
nel. Gupta, Raj, and Wilemon (1985) investigated the R&D and marketing
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interface within a high technology context. Lucas and Bush (1988) explored
the impact of personality on the R&D/marketing interface. In a conceptual
piece, Wilson and Ghingold (1987) argue for linking market needs and R&D,
by among other things, a better interface which they argue will improve the
firms marketing efforts. New and Schlacter (1979), also a conceptual piece,
suggest that earlier marketing appraisals of R&D projects could result in the
earlier abandonment of bad projects, suggesting that marketing research and
market studies would lead to more effective R&D from a market perspective.
A number of research projects have studied R&D and marketing within
the context of new product introductions. Souder (1988), for example, empir-
ically examined how to manage the interface of R&D and marketing through-
out the new product development process. Work by Hise et al. (1990) ex-
amined marketing and R&D interaction and found that the better the
interaction, the more likely the firm was to be successful with the new
product introduction. A recent normative piece by Moenaert and Souder
(1990) provides an information transfer model for integrating marketing and
R&D personnel in the new product development process.
There has, of course, been a fairly good amount of interface research
beyond just marketing and R&D. Early work by Taylor and Anderson (1979),
for instance, suggested the use of goal programming to facilitate the interac-
tion between marketing and the production planning process. This particular
research is evident in the operations literature on production planning which
occasionally examines how to get other significant functions involved in the
David A. Reid and Richard E. Plank 31
efforts in organizations. Lim and Reid (1992), Cespedes (1994) and Hutt
(1995) are all examples of this type of research. Of these, Hutt (1995) offers a
more theoretical perspective, while both Lim and Reid (1992) and Cespedes
(1994) have a more pragmatic, normative focus. All three papers point out
the need to understand how to better integrate functions in the organization.
Summary of Marketing and Other Functions Research
The relationship of marketing and other functions has taken on a new
urgency over the past fifteen years. As technology such as EDI continues to
expand in use, the need to examine how work gets done within and across
organizations will increase. Most business marketing thought within organi-
zations has focused on the interaction of marketing and R&D. The consensus
of this research and the normative advice is that improved linkages lead to
better new product activities.
The interface of marketing and purchasing has also been examined, but
has not been explored thoroughly to date. The increase in partnering type
activities and closer working relationships between suppliers and distribution
partners and buyers and sellers in general, calls for a greater understanding of
ways to coordinate work across functional boundaries as well as across
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Ethics
There has been a great deal of research examining business ethics. Most of
this research has appeared in a specialized journal on ethics or in general
marketing journals. However, this research has typically not been in a busi-
ness marketing context. In the journals included in this review, only fourteen
articles dealing with ethics in a business marketing context were found. Most
of these articles were primarily survey-based empirical studies that attempted
to define and/or describe managers ethical or lack of ethical behavior. For
example, Rudelius and Buchholz (1979), Browning and Zabriskie (1983),
and Forker and Janson (1990) all examined ethical behavior in organizational
buying. Rudelius and Buchholz (1979), using a sample of purchasing agents,
attempted to determine which situations were perceived as ethical dilemmas.
Both Browning and Zabriskie (1983) and Forker and Janson (1990) used
self-report studies to investigate which kinds of ethical problems were being
violated the most. With NAPM sponsorship, the latter study was able to be
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far more inclusive. Results of this broad study indicated most firms did have
ethics policies and that they did seem to be a deterrent to major problems.
Most respondents, NAPM members, felt that only advertising specialties and
business lunches were ethical, but that buyers admitted to accepting other
kinds of favors from sellers. A more narrowly targeted study by Dempsey,
Bushman, and Plank (1980) examined buyers perceptions and use of person-
al inducements in the buying process, while Turner, Taylor, and Hartley
(1994) looked at ethics policies and the acceptance of bribes and other gratui-
ties. Only one study (Trawick, Swan, McGee, and Rink 1991) has examined
the influence of buyer ethics on the actual buyer-seller dyad.
As is discussed in the sales research portion of this paper, ethics in selling
has received considerable attention. Examples from the sales area include
Trawick, Swan, and Rink (1988) who looked at back door selling as an ethics
problem as well as Trawick and Swan (1988) who examined the ethical
issues involved in the use of personal inducements. In a related area, Weeks
and Kahle (1990) studied the impact of a salespersons social values on their
work effort.
There have been only a few normative articles on ethics in business mar-
keting. In an early piece, not specifically tied to practices in business markets,
Lantos (1987) equates ethics with morality and provides a defense of the free
market system. He argues that absolute standards as opposed to relative ones
are a more defensible approach to setting ethical standards. More recently,
Gundlach and Murphy (1993) have argued for a set of ethical and legal
foundations which underlie relationship marketing and the link of ethics to
34 JOURNAL OF BUSINESS-TO-BUSINESS MARKETING
Miscellaneous
was needed and that given business marketings unique aspects, research on
business marketing would continue to grow. Judging from the almost 2,200
articles that have been published since that review, his prediction was correct.
A distinctly opposite view was offered by Fern and Brown (1984) who
argued that business marketing was not a separate area of study. It is interest-
ing that while their paper generated a good deal of discussion, it generated
little in the way of published rebuttals (Cooke 1986).
Another general business marketing article that is noteworthy, is one by
Giunipero, Crittenden, and Crittenden (1990) that explored how to market to
nonprofit organizations and examined the buying behavior of those organiza-
tions. No other work was found in the business marketing literature reviewed
that dealt with nonprofit organizations. Nonprofits offer interesting business-
to-business research opportunities because of the many differences that exist
between them and for-profit organizations.
There were also a number of articles that dealt with organizational issues.
Among these, Ames (1978), for example, presents a very general discussion
of maintaining a management ethic in the process of managing a business-to-
business firm. Only one article discussed the notion of internal marketing
within business-to-business firms (Harrell and Fors 1992). Herbig and Shao
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(1993) explore the Keiretsu concept and its applicability to American firms.
Finally, both ONeil and LaFiel (1992) and Morgan and Piercy (1992) dis-
cussed various aspects of quality management as it applies within the busi-
ness-to-business sector.
Articles addressing business marketing education were also assigned to
the miscellaneous category. Examples of work in this area include empirical
pieces by Plank (1982) and Messina, Guffrida, and Wood (1991) that ex-
amined business marketers views of what was needed for entry-level busi-
ness marketing positions. Taking quite a different perspective, Wills (1984)
discussed the marketing of a business school to industry. On a more micro
level, Lichtenthal and Butaney (1991) examined how business marketing was
taught at various institutions.
Environmental marketing was also the subject of a number of papers. Both
Peattie and Ratnayatan (1992) and Apaiwongse (1994) discuss Green Mar-
keting. Both authors see that environmental awareness and sensitivity can
provide a potential competitive advantage to a firm. Langrehr, Langrehr, and
Tatreau (1992) looked at buyers perceptions of recycled products. Apai-
wongse (1993) provides an interesting study of market reactions to EPA
policies. While the sample was somewhat small (42 companies), it provides
insight into how companies deal with this regulatory agency. There is a great
deal of activity on environmental marketing in other literatures in marketing,
notably marketing and public policy and in the consumer behavior arena.
There is also a great deal of anecdotal evidence in the trade press in this area.
36 JOURNAL OF BUSINESS-TO-BUSINESS MARKETING
For example, ISO 14,000, a new international quality standard for firm envi-
ronmental management, has been recently discussed in the business market-
ing literature (Miles 1997). Yet, there is much more interest in environmental
management in the business press, especially in the European Common Mar-
ket where the environment is a much bigger political issue.
Finally, some other areas that have been touched upon in the literature
include how to hire a consultant (de Monthoux 1978; Basham 1983), entrepre-
neurial aspects (Murray 1981; Morris and Trotter 1990), and marketing in high
technology environments (Meldrum and Millman 1991; Meldrum 1995).
technology marketing has been discussed in the area of new product develop-
ment and in advertising, little general work is evident.
Some interesting questions relating to the literature in this area might
include:
ORGANIZATIONAL BUYING
This part of the manuscript reviews the literature on what is termed organi-
zational buying. This comprises three major sections: purchasing manage-
ment, organizational buying theory, and finally buyer-seller relationships.
The work on purchasing management generally focuses on the work that the
purchasing function does in the organization. Organizational buying behavior
David A. Reid and Richard E. Plank 37
Purchasing Management
and Clemons (1993) provided a total cost supplier selection model using a
case study to illustrate their approach. Biggs, Thies, and Sisak (1990) empiri-
cally examined the cost of ordering, which is one driver toward reducing
supplier bases, and examined suppliers within the framework of multiple
product/service purchases rather than a specific one. Holmes (1991) and Ford
et al. (1993) looked at lease versus buy and make versus buy decisions.
Ellram (1992, 1993) looked at the total cost of ownership model (TCO) and
the function of cost reduction. Ellram defines TCO in relation to life cycle
costing. She argues that there are three general components of TCO--pre-
transaction costs, transaction costs, and post-transaction costs. Purchase price
is a part of transaction costs, but there is effort and cost prior to and after the
purchase. From a purchasing management perspective, the argument is that
TCO is a more appropriate decision making model since it incorporates all
the costs over the life of the item being purchased. Cavinato (1991) went a
step further by examining total cost advantages from an interfirm supply
chain perspective. Cavinato presents a leading edge view and illustrates the
perspective utilized by many world class companies. In line with this ap-
proach, both Gagne and Discenza (1992) and Lere and Saraph (1995) ex-
amined the concept of activity based costing and argued it is the best way to
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truly measure TCO. Williams, Lacy, and Smith (1992) looked at the concept
of value analysis and noted how creative that technique has become as ap-
plied to vendor selection. Value analysis is part of the continuous improve-
ment mentality that is driving not only JIT-oriented firms, but most firms
interested in the quality revolution (Perry and Perkins 1992, Carter and Nara-
simhan 1994). The newest issues that have been developed are the concepts
of target costing and target pricing as applied to the purchasing function
(Newman and McKeller 1995). Target costing and target pricing are terms
used interchangeably and describe a pricing process where the buyer and
seller jointly determine selling price in a negotiation process. The target
generally refers to a targeted cost/price agreement over a specified time
frame, usually with cost or price decreasing as a result of buyer and seller
reducing the costs.
The supplier performance measurement literature provides a number of
articles on vendor relationships with suppliers. Billesbach, Harrison, and
Croon-Morgan (1991) provide empirical evidence of supplier performance
measures in JIT-oriented companies. Thompson (1990, 1991) provides an
overall method for vendor profile analysis and a model for scaling evaluative
criteria to do performance evaluation of suppliers. Watts and Hahn (1993)
documented the increased use by vendors of supplier development programs
targeted at supplier performance enhancement. Examples of the kinds of
proactive activities that vendors are resorting to are presented in a model of
how to evaluate supplier overhead allocations (Landeros, Reck, and Griggs
40 JOURNAL OF BUSINESS-TO-BUSINESS MARKETING
1994), the use of supplier capability surveys (Presutti 1991), and the employ-
ment of the quality function deployment (QFD) process to evaluate and select
suppliers (Ansari and Modarress 1994).
Purchasings Relationship to Other Functions. Another fairly well de-
veloped area is the relationship of purchasing to other functions within and
outside of the firm. One example is in the area of new product develop-
ment. Doulatshahi (1992) and ONeal (1993) studied concurrent engineer-
ing and purchasings role in cross functional teams both within the firm
and on teams involving suppliers. Williams and Smith (1990) and Mendez
and Pearson (1994) examined the role of purchasing in new product devel-
opment and identified the importance of early supplier involvement in the
process. In an interesting and related piece, Hakansson and Eriksson
(1992) documented the use of supplier networks in the development of
innovations and found support for the use of suppliers in the innovation
process.
Finally, there are a number of articles in the literature that point to
specific activities that suggest changes in purchasings orientation and
management. Ellram and Pearson (1993) looked at the overall role of the
purchasing function in the development and use of cross functional teams.
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Trent and Monczka (1994) identified five critical success factors in devel-
oping and operating effective cross functional sourcing teams: organiza-
tional resources to commit, supplier participation, team authority, team
effort, and team leadership. Giumipero and ONeal (1988) outlined vari-
ous obstacles to procurement in a JIT environment. Plank, Reid, and Bates
(1994) discuss the increased use of barter and the rise of specialized barter
intermediaries. Coleman and Mcknew (1990) provide a model for order
placement and sizing that illustrates the increasing use of sophisticated
heuristics and management science methods in purchasing. In the same
vein, there is empirical evidence of the increased use of computers in
purchasing, including EDI (Plank et al. 1992). Finally, Williams (1995) in
a conceptual piece, talks about the notion of the learning organization and
how it applies to the supply management function, arguing that being a
learner is imperative for the 21st century.
S Purchasing has become more professional, more strategic, and more fo-
cused on generating competitive advantage.
S Purchasing has become more aggressive, proactive, and sophisticated
in its approach to sourcing and supply management. This has resulted
in a greater emphasis on target pricing, total cost of ownership (value in
use), and more explicit measurement schema to evaluate supplier per-
formance.
S Purchasing has become more aggressive in providing leadership for
cross-functional and even multiple company teams in order to achieve
competitive advantage contributions.
S Purchasing has become much more technologically-driven using com-
puters and other technology to drive the purchasing function and pro-
cess and is forcing suppliers to go in that direction as well or get left
behind.
However, there are numerous changes that are taking place in purchasing
organizations that have either not been addressed or only minimally ad-
dressed. For example, while purchasing credit cards have been in use for
years, there has been virtually no discussion of them in the literature. Inte-
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grated supply marketing, JIT II, barter, and target pricing are concepts that
leading edge organizations are adopting or experimenting with, yet the pur-
chasing management literature has little or nothing to say about them.
Purchasing and supply management has taken an aggressive stance and
made great strides with respect to improving purchasing processes and prac-
tices. A major contributor to these advances has been the National Associa-
tion of Purchasing Management and its concerted efforts to advance the field.
The end result of these efforts is that in many ways purchasing and supply
management thinking is leading its marketing counterparts. Despite the best
efforts of the Institute for the Study of Business Markets, there is no organiza-
tional effort on the business marketing side of the equation that matches the
efforts being put forth by National Association of Purchasing Management
and its vast membership to advance the field of purchasing and supply manage-
ment. If the business marketing community is to keep pace with its purchasing
counterpart, then a much more aggressive approach will be needed to address
the many questions that remain unanswered. Among these are questions such
as:
S What impact does and should the firms supplier evaluation system
have on how the in- or out-supplier plans and manages their marketing
processes?
S How do/should marketers proactively use their knowledge of purchas-
ing activities in their marketing activities?
S the field was very rich and, we knew more about organizational buying
than we did about end consumers in some respects,
S that a remarkable degree of parallel research, thought, and discovery
exists between organizational and household buying behavior,
S most researchers were preoccupied with descriptive models of the deci-
sion making process,
S market segmentation theory was not used in business markets to the ex-
tent it was in consumer markets,
David A. Reid and Richard E. Plank 43
S that very few field experiments had been done--most research, in terms
of methodology, was either narrative, descriptive, or a case study, and
S finally, that three very weak areas in need of further study were the im-
pact of situational correlates on decision making, the impact of organi-
zational structure on the purchasing function, and the impact of market-
ing communications on the decision making process.
In closing, Sheth identified the following four distinct trends he felt would
characterize future OBB research: the emergence of a consumer-oriented
marketing approach in business marketing, the emergence of a new self-iden-
tity for purchasing as a separate and distinct function from manufacturing, the
likelihood of increased regulation and enforcement of business marketing
practices, and the emergence of a more cross cultural orientation to purchas-
ing with the growth of global organizations. In retrospect, Sheths assertions
have proven very accurate. The first three are clearly representative of current
practice and, while the last trend has not been the subject of much research,
the movement toward global purchasing solutions is gaining momentum in a
number of major worldwide businesses such as automobiles.
Wind. Evidence of the interest and growth in OBB research is reflected in
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the fact that in 1978 alone there were four reviews of the literature (Wind
1978a, 1978b; Bonoma and Zaltman 1978; Ferguson 1978). Wind (1978a), in
his first of two reviews of the field, even went so far as to call for the
establishment of OBB as a separate discipline. His review was divided in five
sections that examined research traditions in the field, the substantive find-
ings, methodological approaches, conceptual and methodological issues, and
provided suggestions for future research.
Wind suggested that several changes were occurring in research traditions.
There was a movement away from simple task and non-task models toward
the development and testing of more complex buying behavior models. The
unit of analysis was moving from individual respondents to buying centers or
dyads. Like Sheth (1977), he also saw increasing emphasis on the organiza-
tional buying decision and the adoption process. A fourth change was a
developing research focus on interorganizational issues such as reciprocity,
bargaining, and negotiation. He also noted increased efforts to develop mod-
els of buyers responses to industrial marketing activities, such as proposed
by Choffray and Lilien (1978). The final change he identified was an increase
in segmentation research efforts.
Wind suggested the fields substantive findings could be summarized into
the following categories: the nature of buying centers and their relationship to
the type of purchase, the average size of buying centers, types of buying
centers, and the relationship of price to product complexity in purchasing. He
also noted that, at that time, most organizations did not single source and
purchasing behavior was clearly linked to the rewards perceived by the
44 JOURNAL OF BUSINESS-TO-BUSINESS MARKETING
buyer. Research also pointed out that buying criteria used by buying group
members reflect the groups task and non-task goals as well as their percep-
tions of the relevant organizational, social, and environmental variables af-
fecting the buying situation.
From a methodological standpoint, Wind argued that the differences be-
tween academic and industry research are sharper in the organizational buy-
ing arena than in consumer behavior. Industry often pioneered the new meth-
odologies. He also observed that OBB researchers could not necessarily use
the same methodologies used by their consumer buying behavior counter-
parts. In addition, he identified and discussed issues and differences in prob-
lem definition, research design, and data collection associated with research
in OBB.
The fourth section of Winds review dealt with conceptual and additional
methodological issues including the unit of analysis, the object of analysis,
the definition of variables, and the time dimension. Unit of analysis problems
centered around identifying relevant respondents, determining the multiper-
son dependent variable, accounting for multiperson independent variables
and developing organizational measures. At that time, as he notes, the general
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question of the object of the analysis had received little attention. He sug-
gested three major considerations relative to the dependent variable--a shift
from single product to multi-product or assortment, a focus on organizational
buying activities, and the consideration of the entire buying process including
both pre- and post-buying activities. These concerns parallel changes occur-
ring in consumer research during the same time period. Wind also discussed
measurement of variables and the concept of organizational psychographics,
a topic that to date has remained relatively unexplored. Finally, he noted that
most organizational buying studies were static and cross-sectional, and sug-
gested that studies be more dynamic.
Among his suggestions for future research, Wind argued for improving the
quality of work in the field and for stronger definitions of theoretical and
operational variables. He also pointed out that too much research represented
one-shot studies and that more replication and programmatic research was
needed. Areas cited that were in need of research were the buying center,
buying situations, forecasting OBB, institutional and government markets, and
interorganizational issues. He also suggested future research needed to consid-
er new research designs, borrowing from other fields when appropriate.
Winds (1978b) second review focuses on the buying center. While pri-
marily written for an academic audience, the article is useful to managers
initiating research for management purposes. Wind specifically noted that, as
of that point in time, there had been relatively little research directed at
understanding the buying center. Reasons were that the original buying cen-
David A. Reid and Richard E. Plank 45
ter definition was somewhat ambiguous and there were methodological diffi-
culties associated with research focused around this concept.
On the conceptual side, problem areas included issues surrounding buying
center involvement, buying center formation and structure, issues relating to
single versus group decision making models, and single versus multiple
decisions. It is interesting to note that while progress has been made in some
of these areas (e.g., buying center involvement and buying center formation
and structure), little progress has been made in addressing group decision
making and single/multiple decision contexts.
Methodological issues relating to buying center research discussed by
Wind include: cross-sectional versus longitudinal research designs, lab ver-
sus real world studies, observation versus survey, experimentation, and single
versus multiple respondents. He concludes his methodological discussion by
suggesting a need for more longitudinal work, laboratory work for better
control, observation and experimentation, and multiple respondent data collec-
tion. With respect to the latter, he notes that analytical procedures to handle the
inherent problems of multiple respondents have to be developed. Wind con-
cluded that while the buying center is a viable concept, research priorities
have yet to be defined.
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Bonoma and Zaltman. Bonoma and Zaltman (1978) provide a very differ-
ent type of review. Their paper is a report of a workshop they were involved
in and presents some of the issues and findings discussed. The authors orga-
nize their discussion around a 2 2 grid of organizational locus of industrial
buying influences. The horizontal axis differentiates within organization and
between organizations issues. The vertical axis distinguished within the pur-
chasing department and between purchasing and other departments/environ-
ment issues. Using this grid, four OBB scenarios emerge: (1) The Purchasing
Agent: Factors in buying dealt with intraorganizational and intradepartmental
issues and research (e.g., social factors, decision strategies, bidding rating
systems, and risk avoidance), (2) The Buying Center: Addressed interdepart-
mental and intraorganizational research issues (e.g., the nature of the buying
center, how it is structured, influence patterns, gatekeeping, and organizational
climate), (3) Professionalism Among Purchasers: Was concerned with intrade-
partmental and intraorganizational issues (e.g., face to face communication,
status, and reciprocity), and (4) Organizations and Environment: Focuses on
interdepartmental and interorganizational issues (e.g., technology, nature of
suppliers and/or business, government influences, and reciprocity).
As with previous reviews, methodological and conceptual considerations
in OBB were also discussed by Bonoma and Zaltman. These were similar to
those identified in other reviews and included such issues as ill-defined
organizations, changes occurring in organizations, the relationship between
consumer and industrial buying behavior, defining the unit of analysis, ap-
46 JOURNAL OF BUSINESS-TO-BUSINESS MARKETING
Thomas and Wind. Thomas and Wind (1980) provide a review similar in
design to that done of Wind (1978a). However, what differentiates their
review from others is their effort to provide a complete and definitive sum-
mary of the substantive findings of the research at that time. They divide their
review, which focuses only on the academic literature, into three areas: the
buying center, the organizational buying process, and factors affecting either
the organizational buying center or the overall process. They conclude with
an extensive discussion of methodological and conceptual issues, similar to
that of Wind (1978), but with slightly greater scope and detail.
Thomas and Wind point out that, despite familiarity with the buying cen-
ter, there continued to be little known about its composition, determinants,
changes in usage, and the nature of the influence patterns. The research
showed that: buying centers have multiple participants which may change
with the situation, participants often come from different functions and dif-
ferent organizational levels, and individuals play different roles and differ in
importance depending upon the conditions and marketing stimuli involved.
Their discussion of the buying process, with results from over thirty
studies, highlights five different conceptualizations of the buying process in
organizations (Robinson and Faris 1967; Ozanne and Churchill 1971; Web-
ster and Wind 1972; Bradley 1977; Wind 1978). All of these have been the
subject of further study, with the exception of Bradleys four step govern-
ment buying model. Key findings of organizational buying processes stud-
ies indicate the process is complex, difficult to model, differs by product
David A. Reid and Richard E. Plank 47
and industry, and across buying situations. Areas of study for which there
was only limited work at that time included identification of needs (Von
Hippel 1978), evaluation of alternatives (Wildt and Bruno 1974; Scott and
Wright 1976; Wind, Grashof, and Goldhar 1978), purchase decision (How
Industry Buys Chemicals 1979), and postpurchase evaluation (Lambert,
Dornoff, and Kernan 1977).
Twenty-six articles were identified as dealing with factors affecting the
buying decision process. These were divided into four categories--personal
factors, interpersonal factors, organizational factors, and interorganizational
factors--with interpersonal factors accounting for the greatest number of ar-
ticles. Wind and Thomas suggested that, in addition to these factors, the
effects of a firms marketing variables, the marketing strategies of competi-
tors, and environmental factors should be included in future comprehensive
studies/models of OBB.
Johnston. Johnstons (1981) review begins with an examination of the
breadth of OBB research. He suggests that the complexity of the organiza-
tional buying process has limited research and that work in OBB needs to be
better integrated into marketing theory. While changes are occurring, John-
ston argues that four assumptions normally underlie organizational buyer
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behavior research. The first is that Industrial buying behavior may be stud-
ied separately from selling behavior or actions taken by a separate individual
or individuals in the firm. This assumption has led to the examination of
individual variables as opposed to the alternative of a dyadic or systems
perspective. The second assumption is that The appropriate way to ap-
proach and model industrial buying behavior is through a stimulus (S)--re-
sponse (R) view of cause and effect. He saw this assumption as inaccurate
and inappropriate and suggested that a more accurate and appropriate ap-
proach would be a transactional one, such as a dyadic model. The third
assumption was that The key theoretical processes occurring in industrial
buying behavior are rational decision making, including decision optimiza-
tion, strategic choice processes and information processing. Johnston points
out that there is nothing inherent in the industrial purchasing process that
would make it purely rational. The final assumption is that The industrial
buying process takes place over time and is a logical, chronological series of
well-planned and executed stages of rational decision making. He takes
issue with this assumption as being reductionistic and points out that studies
have not demonstrated this to be true.
Johnstons review of the literature is organized around the industrial buy-
ing process, the unit of analysis, and models of industrial buying. Despite
numerous attempts at defining the steps or stages involved in the buying
process, he points out that research has failed to support this contention.
Johnston provides a rigorous analysis of the unit of analysis, examining
48 JOURNAL OF BUSINESS-TO-BUSINESS MARKETING
research from the perspective of the firm, the purchasing manager, other
individuals within the buying organization, the dyadic paradigm, and the
systems perspective. He notes that while useful for macrosegmentation pur-
poses, the firm as the unit of analysis obscures the fact that people drive the
organization and its decisions. The most common unit of analysis has been
the purchasing agent. Research has been devoted to assessing the involve-
ment and influence of others in the purchasing process, including problems
of measuring individuals influence and their roles. Work at the dyadic or
systems level of analysis, at that point in time, was primarily conceptual in
nature.
The final portion of Johnstons review focuses on the fourteen complex
models of buying behavior (Robinson, Faris, and Wind 1967; Robinson and
Stidsen 1967; Howard and Morgenroth 1968; Wind and Robinson 1968;
Saleh et al. 1971; Webster and Wind 1972; Sheth 1973; Hakansson and
Ostberg 1975; Wilson 1975; Bonoma, Bagozzi, and Zaltman 1977; Calder
1977; Spekman 1977; Choffray and Lilien 1978; Johnston 1979). He con-
cludes his discussion of OBB models by suggesting that each of the existing
models is not without problems and that systems models offer the greatest
promise for capturing the actual dynamics involved in organizational buying.
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Johnston and Spekman. Johnston and Spekman (1982) offer a more limit-
ed review of the literature. Sensing a lack of purpose and direction in OBB
research, they propose an integrative approach to OBB. Their approach takes
a decision system perspective based on a conceptual model proposed by
Kickert and van Gigch (1979). Kickert and van Gigch argue that a decision
process model consists of three components, a subsystem, an aspect system,
and a phase system. These are essentially a set of objects, the relationships
between the objects, and an environment. Within the organizational buying
process, Johnston and Spekman suggest the subsystem consists of individu-
als, buying centers, functional departments, SBUs and the like. The aspect
systems are the issues, topics, tasks, and decisions. The phase system is the
time phase of the decision process. Existing research is then examined within
the proposed framework. In summarizing the research, they note that more
work is needed on the multiperson nature of the buying process, variables
relating to the buying center and the procurement decision process, the rela-
tionship between organizational decision processes and structure, and how
decision processes flow through an organization. They conclude with a call
for methodological triangulation (i.e., using multiple methods to attack the
same problem).
Kennedy. Kennedy (1982) provides a review of the literature from a pre-
dominantly British perspective. Her review, in addition to American-based
research, includes numerous European works and sources including several
doctoral dissertations, not covered in other reviews. She points out that there
David A. Reid and Richard E. Plank 49
has been no study that has attempted to describe buying behavior across all
sectors of British Industry. In essence, she suggests that a major problem is
that the descriptive work at that time had not been done on a large enough
scale. Additional weaknesses included the lack of replication across a range
of sectors, the exploratory nature and subjective results of much of the re-
search, and a lack of research on locus of buying responsibility.
Smith and Taylor. Smith and Taylor (1985) also provide a European per-
spective. Building on work by another European author, van de Most (1976),
they suggest the literature has the following four orientations--multi-phased
decision procedure, decision making unit or buying center, different purchas-
ing situations, and risk and organizational decision making. Their discussion
of multi-phased decision procedures, buyer center, and purchasing situation
is similar to what has been discussed in earlier reviews. The unique contribu-
tion of their review lies in their detailed discussion of organizational decision
making and risk.
Smith and Taylor point out that research into decision theory has generated
a vast literature, much of which has focused on quantitative models. Howev-
er, much of the quantitative work has not been fruitful. They suggest the
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reason for this is because many of the assumptions underlying the quantita-
tive models are suspect. To illustrate this they use the notion of a rational man
as an example and point out the problems with definition and how that
impacts model building and performance. They argue that qualitative deci-
sion modeling, which deals with behavioral processes, may be a more fruitful
vein of research and provide a discussion of some of the critical decision
process research. In particular, they suggest a model by Thompson and Tuden
(1959) as being quite useful for distinguishing between different decision
situations and their implications for choice activities and apply it to organi-
zational buying decisions. Thompson and Tudens model combines beliefs
about causation (certain or uncertain) and preferences about possible outcomes
(certain or uncertain) to yield a 2 2 grid. The resulting four decision
situations are termed computation (certain beliefs, certain outcomes), compro-
mise (certain beliefs, uncertain outcomes), judgement (uncertain beliefs, cer-
tain outcomes), and inspiration (uncertain beliefs, uncertain outcomes). The
model suggests that in situations where there is little uncertainty about causa-
tion or preferences of outcomes, the decision is mechanical and merely in-
volves choosing the appropriate technique. However, it is the three other
situations, the authors argue, where qualitative models have much to offer. As
evidence of this, they note that McMillan (1980) has attempted to categorize
the many models using this framework. The authors summarize their review
by noting that because business marketing is so complex, complete models
may be too complex to be of use to managers. They argue that simplified
50 JOURNAL OF BUSINESS-TO-BUSINESS MARKETING
models such as the one they propose, while not providing the full solution,
will be of greatest use to managers.
Spekman and Gronhaug. Spekman and Gronhaugs (1986) review pro-
vides a succinct discussion of the conceptual and methodological issues in
buying center research. The first set of issues they address are concerned with
developing the buying center concept. They suggest that buying center defi-
nition should be done in formal organizations, but note that the actual buying
center may or may not be a formal part of the organization. With respect to
buying center boundaries and their domain, they argue that the challenge
facing researchers is to identify the composition of the buying center over
time and the ties between the members.
The next set of issues they examine deal with structural considerations of
the buying center. Research findings, they note, would seem to indicate that
structural variables are viable constructs for measuring buying center influence
and communication networks and that buying center composition, structure,
and information processing capabilities will vary with situational factors.
However, they argue that research has been plagued with methodological
problems such as the use of objective versus subjective measures, use of
respondents versus informants, data aggregation issues, and the question of
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Scott and Webster. Scott and Webster (1991) provide a very detailed re-
view of the OBB literature. The authors state their goals as being to charac-
terize the work, note other streams of research that can add to the literature,
and promote theory building and testing. Despite the amount of research that
has been done, they point out that the field is far from having a solid set of
middle range theories and that conceptual models far outdistance the
capacity to test them and establish them.
The authors begin with a discussion of the definitions and an overview of
the field and suggest that the changes currently taking place may profoundly
shift the focus of the field. Similar to other reviews, they look at approaches
to the study of OBB, decision process models, comprehensive models and the
resultant research they generated, and decision making unit research. Perhaps
one of the most interesting and unique aspects of their review is their discus-
sion of interaction and relationship models. Beginning with the general no-
tion of dyadic models, they go on to discuss the IMP model, models based on
channel relationships, buyer-seller relationship models, models of selling
effectiveness, negotiation models, exchange models, adoption and diffusion
models, decision system models, and script theory. They conclude that an
interaction perspective, although poorly defined at this point in time, offers a
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reading of the literature, that much of the variation in OBB is related to the
levels of risk associated with a given purchase situation. Using the notion of a
risk continuum, they posit that as the risk associated with an organizational
purchase situation increases, the buying group changes, members of the
buyer center tend to be more educated, more experienced, and have more
motivation. Likewise in this situation, proven products and solutions will be
favored, information search will be more active, conflict within the buying
firm increases, formal decision rules may be abandoned or changed, role
stress will increase, and interfirm relationships will be more important. In
concluding, the authors suggest that a meta-analysis could provide further
insights into the research and that additional research is needed on role stress,
external environment, and communication networks.
Summary of OBB Reviews. Taken together, the reviews provide a fairly
comprehensive picture of the field of OBB and offer numerous insights and
suggestions for future research. Their coverage in many cases reaches far
beyond the stated scope of their review thus putting things into unique histor-
ical perspective. However, there are several streams of literature which have
not been addressed in the reviews and there are a number of topics that have
received very little research. Moreover, the years 1993 through 1995 saw
some very interesting contributions to the OBB literature, which the reviews
did not address (Johnston and Lewins [1996] review did not include litera-
ture published after 1993).
Among the neglected topics, and perhaps the most important, is the lack of
David A. Reid and Richard E. Plank 53
ing attitudes. His conceptual model tests whether or not buyers cognitively
address in-suppliers and out-suppliers differently. Michaels, Dubinsky, and
Rich (1995) provide an interesting empirical examination of the components
of buyer motivation, tackling it from a somewhat different perspective than
previous research. The authors use expectancy theory and examine seven
individual characteristics and four organizational characteristics for their im-
pact on how buyers form expectancies, instrumentalities and valences toward
pay, promotion, recognition, and rewards. Results of the regression analysis
on data from 330 NAPM buyers, the authors found they could predict instru-
mentality and valences. For instrumentality, the main drivers were organiza-
tional commitment of buyer and supportive leader behavior. Michaels, Ku-
mar, and Samu (1995), using a very behaviorally-oriented approach, looked
at activity specific role stress in purchasing. They identified five distinct
areas where stress comes into play in purchasing positions. The five areas
were supplier relations and sourcing, core buying activities, source to scrap
analysis, inside-outside decisions, and tooling activities. Research by Heide
and Weiss (1995) examined switching behaviors in high technology markets,
computer workstations. In general they found what might be expected, of 16
hypotheses tested, 11 were supported, buyers used closed consideration sets
(no new vendors) when switching costs were higher. In general, the concept
of switching costs has had very limited coverage in the decision choice
literature of OBB.
54 JOURNAL OF BUSINESS-TO-BUSINESS MARKETING
review of OBB, 219 are empirical. This work is, for the most part, scattered
across a great many topics and few authors have conducted more than one
study in a particular area. Notable among those authors that have done more
programmatic research are Wesley Johnston, Jagdish Sheth, Robert Spek-
man, Frederick Webster, Jr., Yoram Wind, and Arch Woodside.
Despite repeated pleas in previous reviews, there continues to be a need
for agreement as to what are the areas most in need of research and which
areas offer the greatest likelihood of increasing our overall understanding of
OBB. A model for this kind of effort is readily found in the IMP group and
their work on buyer-seller relationships. IMP research provides an excellent
example of the kind of progress that can be made by combining multiple
talents and resources toward pursuing a unified goal.
In general, we concur with Johnston and Lewin (1996) that the field has
enough models and that further testing is needed. We also feel there have
been enough reviews of OBB suggesting things that need to be done. It is
time to address these issues. As with most areas in business marketing there
is little programmatic research and even less replication. Examining buying,
within the context of buying, rather than within a buyer-seller dyad or even
network perspective, is needed and offers great value.
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S How are total overall cost or lifetime cost value orientations manifested
within the firm and how can the marketing firm recognize and market
to this orientation?
S How can the marketer change the value orientation of the buying firm?
S How is the value orientation formed during the buying process and
when can the marketer have impact on that process?
S How can value orientation be incorporated into existing major frame-
works of organizational buying?
Buyer-Seller Relationships
Frear, and Krishnan (1992) point out, that in terms of product importance
there are many product service characteristics but only a few such as impor-
tance, complexity, and novelty have been examined. Information exchange
includes such issues as the quantity, quality, type, and process of information
exchanged. Social exchange is defined as referring to the interpersonal rela-
tionships among the employees who belong to the respective firms buying
and selling centers involved in the exchange and encompasses issues such as
trust and empathy. These factors lead to two outcome variables: cooperation
and adaptation. Cooperation is defined as the extent to which the work of
the buyer and seller is co-ordinated, while adaptation refers to the extent to
which the buyer and seller make substantial investments in the relationship.
Metcalf, Frear, and Krishnan (1992) developed measures for the five vari-
ables of social exchange, product exchange, information exchange, cooperation,
and adaptation. Data collected from the aircraft engine industry provided a weak
but acceptable measurement model fit in support of their general model.
The IMP groups model and efforts have generated a considerable number
of publications. Among these are three edited books by Hakansson (1982),
Ford (1990), and Moeller and Wilson (1995) that discuss aspects of the
model or present various studies based on the model. The list of articles
includes Cunningham (1980), Campbell (1985a, 1985b) Turnbill (1990),
Yorke (1990), Paliwoda and Bonaccorsi (1993), and Pardo, Salle and Spencer
(1995). These articles have typically involved small sample (with one to
thirty-five respondents) case study approaches and employed primarily inter-
58 JOURNAL OF BUSINESS-TO-BUSINESS MARKETING
viewing for data collection. Turnbill, Ford, and Cunningham (1996) provide
a detailed review of the IMP research program.
General Relationship Literature. There has been a considerable amount of
discussion over the last few years relationships and what is referred to as
relationship marketing. While there are differences of opinion as to what
they mean, both Gronroos (1990) and Gummesson (1994) suggest a broad
view of relationships and relationship marketing and see them as being a
network phenomenon that includes the basic notion of a dyad. This view is
reflected in Anderson, Hakansson and Johanson (1994) who provide a con-
ceptual model of dyadic relationships with networks. Johanson and Mattson
(1985) and Thoreli (1990) also discuss the notion of networks and dyads.
Morgan and Hunt (1994) provide a specific theoretical perspective, that of
trust and commitment as antecedents to relationships in markets. Evans and
Lashin (1994) provide another perspective--a pragmatic input-output model
with an assessment component. This component not only includes customer
feedback, but benchmarking of both the company and its competitors. Ber-
gen, Dutta and Walker (1992) provide a more theoretical discussion of
agency theory as it applies to relationships. The classic and oft-quoted work
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and also addresses the normative question of which one relationship is best.
An important empirical point they make is that only 24% of the relationships
described in their sample were single source relationships, and even in the
collaborative relationships within their sample only 34% were single source.
Iacobucci and Ostrom (1996) provide another perspective for addressing
these questions. These authors argue relationships are just not business-to-
business, but involve individual to individual, and individual to business as
well. Using a sample of 98 MBA students, they defined three sets of relation-
ships. While it is difficult to ascertain validity of the work outside of the
research sample, these authors bring to the topic area a number of very
important points. First of all, business relationships can and need to be de-
fined at different levels. Organization to organization definitions are critical
to our understanding of buyer-seller relationships, but organizations consist
of people and those people have relationships as well. Thus, relationships
need to be understood at both levels. There also needs to be a recognition that
individuals drive the organizational relationships and the constraints to those
relationships such that the intersection of at least two types of relationships,
organization to organization and individual to individual, is important. Iaco-
bucci and Ostrom (1996) offer very important insights into the definition of
buyer-seller relationships as well as the different levels and can serve as an
excellent foundation for future and continuing research in this important area.
Alliances and Partnerships. There is a great deal of normative work on
what strategic alliances and partnerships are, how to develop and maintain
60 JOURNAL OF BUSINESS-TO-BUSINESS MARKETING
them, and what they mean from a strategic perspective. Most of this work
deals primarily with the development of alliances and partnerships. Examples
of this research in the business marketing literature include both Ellram
(1991) and Rognes (1995). There is a great deal of work extolling the virtues
and discussing the strategic implications of partnerships. For example, An-
derson and Narus (1991), Cardozo, Shipp, and Roering (1992), and Stafford
(1992) examine partnerships/alliances as strategy. Kanter (1994) does much
the same, pointing out that collaboration provides a competitive advantage
when done correctly. Dunn and Thomas (1994) and Hardy and McGrath
(1994) provide general discussions of how to go about partnering.
Other papers of interest include Stuart and McCutcheon (1995) who pro-
vide an empirical examination of the problems people face in establishing
alliances; Johnson (1995) who defines an empirical taxonomy of distur-
bances to relationships; Landeros, Reck, and Plank (1995) who provide a
model for maintaining existing partnerships; and Perrien, Paradis, and Bant-
ing (1995) who provide empirical examination of dissolving relationships.
Ellram (1995) provides an empirical examination of the various pitfalls and
success factors in buyer-seller partnerships. Narus and Anderson (1995) dis-
cuss how to use teams to manage collaborative relationships, while Frear and
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S What kinds of relationships are there and how should they be empirical-
ly defined?
S How can we better measure the relationship as a whole?
62 JOURNAL OF BUSINESS-TO-BUSINESS MARKETING
S What is the link between the type of relationship a buyer and seller have
and the skills needed by both parties to start or maintain that relation-
ship?
S How are marketing and/or buying skills, behaviors, and outcomes af-
fected by the nature of the relationship?
S Are some types of buyer-seller relationships generally more value-pro-
ducing than others?
S How can marketers be proactive in generating relationship type change
rather than just accepting the relationship as determined by the buyer?
with research done in either of the two other areas. While there has been
discussion of the changes being affected in purchasing, they have had little
impact on recent conceptual or empirical research.
There is greater level of congruence between OBB research and buyer-
seller research. One only needs to examine the recent reviews by Johnston
and Lewin (1996) of OBB and Wren and Simpson (1996) of buyer-seller
relationships to see the similarities. It is also clear, from the work done over
the years, that in both areas there has been much more conceptual work than
theory testing. Much of the theory testing that has been done has been on the
OBB side.
While the work of the IMP group was discussed in this review, their efforts
have not been widely discussed or integrated into academic research efforts
here in the United States. This may in part be due to the fact that most of the
IMPs research has either appeared in European journals or a limited number
of books that may not be widely available. Given that the IMP has generated
a considerable amount of insightful work over the past twenty years, re-
searchers in the United States need to capitalize on their efforts.
An important key to organizational buying and perhaps to the integration
of the work in this area is customer value. The concept of customer value
pervades the trade literature. Yet, other than the work of Anderson, Jain, and
Chintagunta (1993), there has not been much conceptual development or
empirical effort. Key questions still remain as to how industrial buyers define
value, how value drives their decision process, and how value should be
factored into marketing decisions. For example, should value only be defined
David A. Reid and Richard E. Plank 63
from the perspective of the buying firm, the perspective of shared value in the
dyad, or in some broader fashion such as a supply chain perspective?
Finally, whether we examine the exchange process from the perspective of
the buyer, seller, dyad, or network, additional research is needed in the area
relationships. It is surprising that despite all the research to date, we still
know very little about relationship types. Work by Cannon and Perreault
(1994) and Iacobucci and Ostrom (1996) provide us with a starting point by
suggesting that relationships can be defined in terms of who is involved (i.e.,
individual or organization). Additional research is also needed to better delin-
eate the stages involved with different types of relationships as well as identi-
fying appropriate marketing activities given different types and stages of
relationships.
MARKETING SCIENCES
Market Research
(1990); Durhan and Wilson (1990); London and Donmeyer (1990); Karima-
bady and Brunn (1991); Diamantopoulos, Schlegelmilch, and Webb (1991);
Faria and Dickenson (1992); Kallis and Giglitrano (1992); Chawla, Balahrish-
nan, and Smith (1992); Paxson (1992); Ford, McLaughlin, and Williamson
(1992); Armstrong and Yokum (1994); Haggett and Mitchell (1994); Chawla
and Nataraajan (1994); Kalafatis (1994); and Greer and Lohtia (1994). A
review paper by Balabanas and Schlegelmilch (1996) not only reviews the
findings, but also provides results of a survey of market research managers
and executives in Great Britain as to what works or does not work. The
quantitative articles suggest the following factors have a positive impact on
response rates: sponsorship of the research, interest in the topic being re-
searched, number of contacts and pre-notification, type of postage, and mon-
etary and non-monetary incentives. Factors such as anonymity and nature of
the cover letter appear to be inconclusive.
Research Methods. A second major theme in the research literature is the
analysis of various research methodologies, predominantly in measurement
and statistics, that are applied to business marketing. While primarily of
importance to academic researchers, most of these ideas are applicable and
important to managers. Work in this area has addressed measuring and
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level, Nauman and Lincoln (1989) suggest using systems theory as a basis for
conducting market research, and Gross (1985), in a particularly insightful
piece, outlines the critical uses of research in business marketing. Finally,
empirical work by Schlegelmilch, Boyle and Therivel (1986) and Schlegel-
milch and Therivel (1988) reports on the usage of marketing research in
different types of industrial firms.
Other Research Literature. Where and how to get information has also
been the subject of some study. Comer and Chakrabarti (1978) profiled the
information industry for business marketers. Fries (1982) discussed library
resources. More (1978) empirically examined the uses of primary and secon-
dary data, specifically in new product projects.
Competitor and customer analysis have also been addressed. Brock (1984)
and Grawbowski (1987) outlined some practical approaches to competitor
analysis, while Keep, Omura, and Calantone (1994) discussed what manag-
ers should know about competitive technology. Sinclair and Stalling (1990)
provide a case study on the use of perceptual mapping as a tool for customer
and competitor analysis. There are some what amount to standards of com-
petitor analysis in the practitioner literature which are much more developed
than any of the work cited here.
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suggest methods to improve response rates and thus make samples potential-
ly more valid and less biased. There have been a number of review articles
which provide succinct guidance on getting better response rates and all have
been quoted in this paper. However, there are a number of issues that have not
been examined in depth, but probably need to be. New technologies such as
the Internet and the ubiquitous use of fax machines have not been explored in
detail as to their usage as survey delivery mechanisms. Research in these
areas is only just beginning and both media represent other methods besides
that of mail for getting survey responses.
There has been some discussion of how to collect data from multiple
respondents. This has come about as researchers have recognized the com-
plexity of organizational buying processes and have documented the notion
of buying groups or centers, both formal and informal and which typically
consist of more than one person. While we know we have a problem both
conceptually and methodologically in addressing the issue of multiple re-
spondents, there is no readily apparent solution. For example, if we collect
data from multiple respondents using key respondents and exhaustive snow-
balling we run into non-response problems as well as issues regarding how to
combine the data. If we go to a laboratory method and put the groups together
prior to the decision and then have them do some exercise then external
validity is suspect, regardless of whether the example is real or hypothetical.
Doing research internationally and dealing with the impact of culture on
research methods and measures needs to be better developed. There is very
little guidance available in this area. Some work has been done by Triandis,
David A. Reid and Richard E. Plank 67
Bontempo, Leung, and Hui (1990) in the psychology literature and Yu,
Keown, and Jacobs (1993) who examined the cross-cultural implications of
attitude-type survey research. There are perhaps other examples, but the work
is really fragmented. There is some agreement as to the validity of translation
and back translation as a method, but recent work by Plank (1998) argues that
these methods will not guarantee measure validity. Finally, while not in the
literature to date, the federal government is transforming the Standard Indus-
trial Classification (SIC) system into the North American Industry Classifica-
tion System (NAICS). The impact of this transformation should be of real
interest to industrial market researchers. Questions of note for future research
on market research in business markets include:
Forecasting
(Keeney and Lilien 1987), and judgment modeling techniques in new product
situations (Scott and Kaiser 1984) have all been explored. Oren and Rothkopf
(1984) develop a very general and simple market dynamics model. In a
non-empirical piece, Walton (1979) compared the forecasting techniques of
opinion versus regression.
The markets and situations addressed include the solid state industry
(Brown 1978), the telephone market (McCrohan 1978), demand for a recycl-
ing plant (Petty and Pointon 1979), forecasting in a developing country
(Brasch 1978), commercial construction (Rosenberg 1982), jobs to order (Ru-
delius, Willis, and Hartley 1986, 1990), improving salespersons forecasts
(Cox 1989), and improving high tech forecasting (Wheeler and Shelley 1987).
Another track consists of general normative forecasting articles. Gross and
Peterson (1978) examined ways to deal with the human aspects of forecast-
ing. Herbig, Milewicz, and Golden (1993) discuss the dos and donts of sales
forecasting. Cleary and Lanford (1978), at a more micro level, address the
specific issues of technology assessment--referencing work by the economist
Henry Adams and the law of acceleration as a means to understanding some
of these issues. Buttner and Lanford (1980) address the basic issue of what to
forecast within a technological environment. A final normative article on
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Market Segmentation
of the issues. Thomas and Wind (1982) draw and discuss empirical general-
izations based on the research. Cheron and Kleinschmidt (1985), in addition
to reviewing the literature, provide a framework for segmenting markets.
Plank (1985b) discusses the value of the academic segmentation research to
business marketers. He concludes that while providing some interesting
usages of statistical techniques, it would be difficult for managers to use the
research to date because it fails to provide any guidance as to implementa-
tion. Cross and Rudelius (1993) provide a brief review of both the practical
and theoretical tradeoffs in market segmentation. Most of their discussion
centers on understanding the role of various costs to the firm when making
segmentation decisions. Finally, Wind and Thomas (1994) examine both
theory and practice and provide a set of interrelated questions that managers
must ask themselves in making segmentation decisions.
Based on these reviews:
This final paper provides an excellent guideline for the practicing manager.
advice on using databases. Bolfing and Schmidt (1988) discuss how to use
expert database services. Binetti (1980) illustrates the use of on-line informa-
tion to aid in the new product development process. Finally, Van, Doris, and
Stidthey (1990) provide some advice on how to develop a database for sales
leads.
Empirical work on computer usage in business marketing is meager. Re-
search on the usage of computers in distributor marketing (Narus and Guimaraes
1987) and the increased usage of laptop computers by industrial salespeople
(Moncreif, Lamb, and McKay 1991) are the exception. One general non-empir-
ical paper on using personal computers to automate marketing activities
provides an overview of using personal computers for business marketing
applications (Manssen 1990).
Articles on management science models in business marketing are also
sparse. Both Webster (1978b) and Brandi (1978) discussed the potential
benefits of the application of management science to business marketing
problems, with Brandi specifically focusing on simulation as a tool. Work by
Lilien (1979) on modeling the marketing mix generated some discussion
(Farris and Bussell 1980; Lilien 1980). There is also a general discussion of
computer models with a case study by Arinze (1990). Choffray and Lilien
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(1982) have also written about a decision support model they developed for
industrial product design. Steckel (1988) briefly described Pioneer, a deci-
sion support model for general industrial product planning. While not in-
cluded in this review, the journal Interfaces provides a rich source of litera-
ture on the application of management science and similar tools to business
problems, in general. An illustration of this is a piece by Gensch, Aversa, and
Moore (1990) which outlines the impact of using advanced segmentation
techniques on overall corporate profitability.
The implications of electronic data interchange (EDI) for business market-
ers has been addressed by Barrier and Morris (1987), while the impact of EDI
in specific functions such as sales has been examined by Hill and Swenson
(1994). The work by Barrier and Morris (1981) is somewhat unique in that it
concerns the transfer of information between two or more companies, not just
the use of information by one company. As is noted later in the purchasing
management and buyer-seller literature discussions, changes are occurring in
the fundamental approaches to how business is conducted and these changes
are being driven in part by the availability and use of technologies like EDI.
As noted above, research in this area has been extremely limited. There
was a brief flurry on computer expert systems and some attempts at computer
models such as CALLPLAN (Lodish 1971). Bettis-Outland and McFarland
(1998) review in detail the research activity in this area, which encompasses
David A. Reid and Richard E. Plank 73
sales force size modeling, resource allocation, sales force performance and
compensation.
While the trade press has had numerous articles on sales automation and
technology-enabled sales, there has been only limited academic research.
Academic literature provides little descriptive or prescriptive information,
much less assistance to firms in helping them determine when and what they
should do in their sales automation activities. Among the basic questions that
remain unanswered are the following questions:
S What kinds of sales automation projects are likely to provide the high-
est returns?
S How will these systems impact the actual sales process?
Summary of Marketing Sciences Research
The marketing sciences area has had mixed coverage. In the market re-
search area, a significant amount of work has addressed issues in doing
survey research and in improving response rates to questionnaires. Much of
the work that has been done is useful to both academics and those in industry.
Efforts have also been directed at addressing the methodological issues con-
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PRODUCT
This part of the review deals with research on both product and service
74 JOURNAL OF BUSINESS-TO-BUSINESS MARKETING
for industrial project selection and management. Lucas and Bush (1984)
provide a general set of guidelines for marketing new industrial products and
Bingham (1988) suggests a new product development model. Dundas and
Krentler (1982) develop a critical path model for introducing new industrial
products. Ford and Ryan (1981) provide a general method for taking technol-
ogy to market by understanding the technology life cycle. More (1984) pro-
vides guidance on how to improve the adoption rate of new high technology
products. Work by Rochford (1991) discusses generation and screening of
new product ideas, while Vesey (1992) argued for the importance of speed to
market and provides guidelines for speeding the product development pro-
cess. Cooper (1988) suggested that predevelopment activities determine new
product success and outlined those activities.
Related to the above, there have also been a number of normative articles
on some specific aspect of marketing within a new products/services context.
For example Rangan, Menezes, and Maier (1992) focused on issues involved
in channel selection for new industrial products and offered a framework for
making channel decisions. They identified eight generic channel choice fac-
tors, provided a three-step method for deriving and analyzing the factors, and
illustrated the use of the framework in a business marketing application.
Bello and Barczak (1990) looked at trade shows as a vehicle for improving
company new product development efforts and offered guidelines on how
they might be used. Dolan and Mathews (1993) looked at the research side of
the equation and provided guidance on using customers for beta testing new
products. A final example of this type of work is McKeown (1990), who
David A. Reid and Richard E. Plank 75
looked at how to get new products from new technologies and focused on the
problem of going from abstract research to a marketable commodity.
Activities that lead to successful new product innovation have been studied
extensively. A particular stream of literature begun by Cooper (1975) has
generated well over 100 articles, most of which are empirical. Much of the
work by Cooper and colleagues has been summarized in Cooper (1990, 1992),
Cooper and Kleinschmidt (1995) and Johne and Snelson (1988). The work of
Cooper is based on three major empirical studies employing similar method-
ology. Using a variety of data collection methods, respondents in the studies
were asked to evaluate successful and unsuccessful new product introduc-
tions on a number of attributes. The attributes were factor analyzed and then
cluster/discriminant analysis was used in examining those activities that con-
tributed to effective new product introductions. Cooper and colleagues identified
eight key factors that contributed to the success of a new product--(1) superior
product with unique benefits to the customer, (2) well defined product and
project prior to undertaking development, (3) technological synergy, (4) quality
of execution of technological activities, (5) quality of other pre-development
activities, (6) marketing synergy, (7) quality of execution of marketing activities,
and (8) market attractiveness (Cooper and Kleinschmidt 1990). Montoya, Weiss,
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that CEO attitudes were not related to adoption. Rabino (1983) used the
notion of concept evaluation in discussing how marketers could facilitate the
adoption of image systems used by art and production directors. More (1984)
provided a planning framework for improving adoption rate. Robertson and
Gatignon (1986) provided research propositions for organizational adoption
and the effects of competition. Rosen, Schnaars, and Shani (1988) examined
the impact of setting industry standards on diffusion within an industry. They
argued that setting standards reduces risk of failure but also increases the risk
of collusion and inefficiencies on the part of competitors. Rosenberg (1988)
looked at the role of research industrial product diffusion. Harrer, Weijo, and
Hattrup (1988) explored the role of change agents in a case study of irrigation
equipment used by farms. Day and Herbig (1990) furnish a discussion of how
the diffusion of industrial products differs from retail products. Their results
suggested three fundamental differences--funding commitments, time orien-
tation, and risk. Sinkula (1991) explored factors influencing the organization-
al adoption of scanner based research methods. He argued his findings were
largely in agreement with the general findings discussed by Rogers (1983).
Gauvin and Sinha (1993), working with a sample of 8,000 firms, looked at
the adoption of computer technology. Their model of the adoption process for
computer technology adds the concept of opportunities for adoption and
portrays it as a two stage process with adoption being a function of both
opportunities and innovativeness. Their findings, when compared to a single
stage logit model, suggests the two stage model is more robust.
David A. Reid and Richard E. Plank 79
This area has been very prolific, primarily driven by the work of Cooper
and colleagues, but many other researchers have also made a significant
impact. However, this area suffers from problems similar to those in the sales
performance literature. Recent work by Cooper (1990) on the Stage Gate
model has pointed out that new product development is a process that occurs
over time. Most of the early research and much of the continuing research
examines from a cross-sectional perspective the impact of various issues on
the overall success of a particular product or project. However, as the stage
gate process argues, different activities are likely to be more or less important
at different points in time and are likely to have differential impacts at differ-
ent points in time. There is a need to understand how the process impacts the
output, which is different from the focus of the input-output research that has
typically characterized this area. Limited work has examined specific parts of
the new product process, but this work has been very narrow in scope and
does not connect to the entire process. Readers should again be cautioned that
much of the work on new products in business markets appears in a wide
variety of journals including those of management and engineering, and that
while there appears to be a great deal of overlap, some interesting perspec-
tives appear in other literatures not covered in this review. In addition, contin-
ued work on the diffusion of innovations paradigm also crosses many disci-
plines and is broader than the limited coverage in the business marketing
80 JOURNAL OF BUSINESS-TO-BUSINESS MARKETING
branding has been virtually ignored and only one paper (Easton 1978) has
looked at packaging.
Weak products and their elimination has been examined at length in a
series of studies by Avlonitis (1982, 1983, 1984, 1985a, 1985b, 1986a,
1986b, 1993). His work is based on two different data sets. The first data set
deals primarily with the product elimination process in firms--how the pro-
cess is managed, who makes the decisions, how weak products are identified,
and what major factors are considered in the decision to eliminate. His latest
work (1993) represents a second data set reporting factors managers consider
in deciding to drop a product. Vyas (1993) provides a holistic view of the
complexity of the product elimination process using a case study format,
whereas Saunders and Jobber (1994) document the strategies used by compa-
nies to both simultaneously delete one product and launch its replacement.
There is a small and mostly dated stream of research dealing with industrial
product managers, most of which use a comparative format with consumer
product managers. Kelly and Hise (1979) and Cummings, Jackson, and Os-
trom (1984) document some of the differences between the job functions.
Eckles and Novotny (1984) focus on the industrial product manager, empiri-
cally defining their authority and responsibilities with a sample of 92 product
managers. Dawes and Patterson (1988), using a sample of 163 respondents,
examined the performance measurements of industrial and consumer product
managers. Finally, Lysonski and Woodside (1989), using boundary role
theory, examine conflict resolution and performance of industrial product
managers using a sample of sixty-nine managers.
David A. Reid and Richard E. Plank 81
components and bundle another companys products to provide a better fit for the
customer or to conform to the customer specifications. Wilson, Weiss, and
John (1990), for example, look at both bundling and unbundling of products
within multi-component systems, such as a computer network system which
may have many different pieces of hardware and software. Using mathemati-
cal modeling they develop a model for bundling and unbundling that consid-
ers system integration, optimality and modularity, and whether the system
conforms to open standards. Paun (1993) provides a set of normative stan-
dards for determining when to bundle or unbundle products.
Brand equity, a major issue in consumer markets, has received limited atten-
tion in business markets. Saunders and Watt (1979) used a case study to deter-
mine if brand names could differentiate identical industrial products and found
some examples where this has occurred. Sinclair and Seward (1988) used 368
respondents to examine the effectiveness of branding a commodity product. This
paper examined branding practices in a very narrow product category, building
products, and queried both manufacturers and retail distribution outlets. While
there was thought to be extensive branding benefits, as perceived by both the
manufacturer and the retail outlet, only a few companies realized any benefits.
Using a sample of 135 companies in the UK, Shipley and Howard (1993) found
that brand names are extensively used and thought to be valuable. More recently,
both Mudambi (1995) and Kim et al. (1995) have suggested the need to rethink
the industrial branding process. In particular, Kim et al. provide a model with
propositions which suggests how brand equity is built and proposes that, in
82 JOURNAL OF BUSINESS-TO-BUSINESS MARKETING
Other than the product elimination research there has been very little program-
matic research in the product management literature. There has been minimal work
dealing with the people involved in product management and exactly what the job
entails. Much more needs to be done to define the product management process,
the skills/competencies needed to do the job, as well as work examining best
practices in product management. As noted, the notion of the bundling and unbun-
dling of product offerings is a very basic strategic question that is only now being
addressed in some fashion. Also noted is the potential importance of brand equity,
something that is very important in consumer markets and needs to be examined in
business-to-business markets.
Given the preceding comments, the following questions need to be ad-
dressed:
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Services
deals with professional services. Finally, there is a much larger area that deals
with the importance of customer service, service quality, and other tactical
issues of making service happen. Each of these areas will be discussed below.
Gronroos (1979) was the first to suggest a theory for marketing industrial
services. Likewise, Jackson and Cooper (1988) have argued that there are
some unique aspects to the marketing activities of industrial services. The
remainder of the work is primarily normative, with the only empirical effort
being by Kyj (1987), who examined how companies use customer service as
a competitive tool.
Roscitt and Parket (1990) argue for a model of strategic service manage-
ment pointing out the importance of service strategy as a competitive weapon.
Both Wagner and LaGarce (1981) and Wagner (1987) make similar arguments.
Cooper and Jackson (1988) take a marketing orientation approach arguing that
companies in the service sector need to be service marketing-oriented. Samli,
Jacobs, and Wills (1992) discussed the pre/postsale services that are generally
needed to be competitive in an international marketing environment.
With respect to new service development, deBrentani (1991, 1995) has
been the primary advocate of the need for research on new industrial services.
Utilizing the research methodology pioneered by Cooper (1975) in examin-
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ing new product success and failure, deBrentani has examined the factors that
lead to the success and failure of new product services. Another interesting
small sample study was done by Woodside, Sanderson, and Brody (1988)
who looked at testing the acceptance of a new industrial service--a wool
testing service in New Zealand.
In terms of the marketing of professional services Gummesson (1978), in
an early piece, has suggested a theoretical approach to the marketing of
professional services. He defines professional services and identifies eight
components which fit into three broad areas: inputs/resources, process/opera-
tions, and end product output. He essentially argues that services can be
defined as an input-process-output phenomenon. Yorke (1990) using the IMP
group approach to research develops a model for services marketing. More
recently, Bostrom (1995) provides a large sample (398 respondents) empiri-
cal study of professional services. His approach is interesting because, in
effect, he tries to ascertain what makes for a good customer of a service.
Within a very narrow context, users of architectural services in Sweden, he
found that architects consider people who cooperate with them to have a high
degree of knowledge, good relational characteristics such as trust and hones-
ty, and value and understand good architectural work.
The final and largest area of services research centers on efforts examining
various aspects of customer service. Two important empirical pieces are Day
and Barksdale (1992) and Morris and Davis (1992). The former examines
how firms select a professional service. The latter looked at how firms mea-
84 JOURNAL OF BUSINESS-TO-BUSINESS MARKETING
sure and manage their customer service operations. The only other empirical
piece by Morris and Fuller (1989) examined how CPA firms price their
services. A number of other conceptual and managerial pieces also deserve
mentioning. Gummesson (1981), following up on his theory article, devel-
oped a concept called marketing cost as applied to service firms. What he
basically does in this article is take into account the fact that professional
service providers play dual roles: service provider and marketer. Thus, he
argues those costs must be properly apportioned. Tinsley and Lewis (1978)
provide a set of normative guidelines for the general evaluation of industrial
services for buyers of those services. McGuire (1986) discusses how to
develop customer service policies. Coppett (1988) takes the concept of a
marketing audit and discusses how to audit your customer service activities.
Lynn (1986) provides a discussion and an example of segmenting a business
market for a professional service. Cohen and Lee (1990) examine the impor-
tance of using spare parts and after-sales service activities to keep in touch
with your customers, while Szmigin (1993) discusses how to manage the
quality of your business services.
A limited number of articles have also addressed quality and its measure-
ment. Babakus, Pedrick, and Richardson (1995) is an example of the use of
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Summary of Services
The services research agenda really breaks down to two issues, those of
how to manage a service business (where the offering is a pure or mostly
service offering) and the notion of the role of service in the product offering.
The research in both areas is fragmented. Additional research is needed in
order to assess the usefulness of SERVQUAL business markets. The fact that
measurements of SERVQUAL are very mixed in terms of reliability and
validity means additional research is warranted.
As has been suggested, many purchasing departments establish formal
measures of supplier performance. These are, in essence, the value measures
for the buying firm. Whether a marketer is dealing with products or services,
the job is to comply with the necessary performance measures or to change
them. Among the many potential research topics in the services area in need
of additional research are the following:
Product research has had a significant amount of effort devoted to the new
product area. Cooper and colleagues have had a twenty year research pro-
gram that has provided a great deal of insight into factors that impact on the
success or failure of industrial products as a whole. His recent stage gate
model suggests that different factors are going to vary in importance at
different stages of the process and that the rules for moving from one stage to
the next differ. This suggests additional research is needed to examine the
linkage of factors to process stages.
Timing and new product introductions is another area that has received
some attention, but is an area from which few conclusions can be drawn. A
basic question companies face is whether to be first in the market. There has
been some excellent and important work in the area, but further refinement is
needed to provide normative advice to managers.
Product management research has been even more limited. And although
there are many areas that could benefit from additional research, three in
particular, stand out. The first is that of product life cycles, especially as it
86 JOURNAL OF BUSINESS-TO-BUSINESS MARKETING
PRICING
cycle pricing, a practice that one would expect to be more prevalent today. An
interesting study by Plinke (1985) examined the pricing decision for capital
goods, with specific emphasis on modeling the psychological variables as
well as the cost accounting approach. Morris (1987) assessed the use of
separate prices as a marketing tool. More recently, Shipley and Bourdon
(1990) explored how distributors price products in competitive markets and
Morris and Fuller (1989) examined the pricing of an industrial service, spe-
cifically the pricing of CPA accounting services.
Global pricing issues have been explored in three empirical articles. Abratt
and Pitt (1987) examined pricing practices in two industries in South Africa.
However, the external validity of their findings to other countries and indus-
tries has not been demonstrated. In another interesting international effort,
Farley, Hulber, and Weinstein (1980), in a case-based study, looked at price
setting in two European industrial companies.
Competitive bidding, an important pricing topic, has received few empiri-
cal efforts. Boughton (1987) provides a general look at the overall competi-
tive bidding process. Williams and Sagarbakhshi (1988), taking a slightly
different focus, examined competitive bidding in both the department of
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defense and in the private sector. They found a number of differences in the
processes across the two business sectors.
Normative Studies. The number of normative pricing articles far exceeds
that of empirical articles and covers a broad variety of pricing issues. Jain and
Laric (1979) and Canum and Morgan (1991) provide a general framework for
making strategic pricing decisions. A piece by Laric (1980) tried to define
pricing strategies.
A number of studies have focused on the customer in price setting. Shapi-
ro and Jackson (1978) and Jackson (1980) examine the process of pricing
from the perspective of meeting consumer needs and the risk element that
pricing represents to the parties. Forbes and Mehta (1981), in a classic article
often quoted in segmentation work, examined the notion of value to the
customer and pricing from a value to the customer perspective. In a more
recent work, Thompson, Coe, and Lewis (1994) provide more detail on value
computations while Kortge and Ikonkwo (1993) offer additional insights into
perceived value and how to use it in pricing.
Specialty pricing situations have also received some attention. Boughton
(1984), for example, examined closed bid pricing. Cavusgil (1988) examined
export pricing. Weekly (1992) discussed the nature of pricing in foreign
markets. The nature of pricing in the high technology product and service
market is looked at in Grunenwald and Vernon (1988). Aranoff (1995) dis-
cusses the issue of transfer pricing problems, with specific discussion of the
impact of demand on the actual transfer price. He basically contends that
88 JOURNAL OF BUSINESS-TO-BUSINESS MARKETING
transfer pricing between divisions is a peak load problem and thus pricing is
subject to the demand state. This is the only discussion of transfer pricing.
Since the early classic on lease pricing by Anderson and Lazer (1978) and
Anderson and Bird (1980), there has been little documentation on the use of
leasing in business markets, a practice that is heavily used. Smith and Nagel
(1994) provide an interesting and useful article on the finances of leasing and
examine the use of financial analysis as a tool in developing lease prices that
meet profit objectives.
From a normative standpoint, three additional articles are worth mention-
ing in detail. First is one by McGrath (1991) who provides a list of ten
timeless truths about pricing. He argues pricing is only one part of the overall
revenue generating strategy and has to be carefully tied to market share
strategy. He notes that pricing always involves cost, is always related to
performance, must be segment based, and is related to the investment in
brand equity. He also notes that pricing must take into account distribution
dynamics, cant be overly complex, that its impact must be measured, and
that the implementation of pricing plans requires salespeople with good ne-
gotiation skills.
The second, by Woodside (1994), provides the first attempt at developing
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a pricing process map. This causal map examines the factors that drive the
pricing decision as well as the impact of price on the company, market, and
competition. Woodside argues that using such a model allows the user to
understand multiple pricing goals, factors that impact directly and indirectly
the setting of price, feedback loops and their impact on performance, and
organizes the pricing process so continuous learning occurs. He then pro-
vides a case study on pricing a new industrial product in New Zealand and
how the use of the model increases our understanding of the process.
The third article of note is by Kijewski and Yoon (1990) who take the idea
of a price performance curve and broaden it to a market-based price perfor-
mance analysis. This is essentially value-based pricing and they demonstrate
the algorithim using hypothetical data from the computer microprocessor
industry. Finally, it should be noted that several very interesting articles by
Irv Gross have addressed value pricing and are available from the Institute
for the Study of Business Markets at Penn State.
correct in that there are many situations where price is the primary factor.
Future research has to determine how value is computed and when purchase
price is likely to be the surrogate used for value.
We suggest that it is reasonable to assume that price, both in the short or
long term, can serve as an underlying fundamental definition of value for
purchase situations. However, the exact way in which a particular firm calcu-
lates values may take many forms. Companies may also consider all direct
and indirect costs, short term and long term, to determine value (value in use
or lifetime overall cost). They may also focus on some other attribute, such as
quality for instance, that is not necessarily a price-related variable. They may
also choose to take a supply chain perspective.
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David A. Reid and Richard E. Plank 91
Among the many questions and issues related to pricing in business mar-
kets that need to be examined, the following offer some useful avenues for
further research:
DISTRIBUTION
This section is divided into two parts. The first will deal with channel
management--the management of the buying-selling system--in business mar-
kets. The second will deal with logistics in the management of physical
distribution systems.
Channel Management
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The channel management literature has four main thrusts. One focuses on
industrial distributors, a second smaller one focuses on manufacturers reps
and agents, and the remaining two deal with the behavioral aspects of chan-
nels and general channel management.
Distributors. The work on distribution as an institution and the manage-
ment and problems of distribution in business writings is limited. Michman
(1980) pointed out a number of general trends including evidence of consoli-
dation in distribution. The author also noted changes in selling, service re-
quirements, and the problems of small distributors in competing in some
markets. In an empirical piece, Narus, Reddy, and Pinchak (1984) identified
typical problems industrial distributors face. Inventory return policies were
the biggest and most consistent manufacturer-distributor problem. In a simi-
lar but more narrowly focused empirical piece, Shipley (1987) examined
problems that distributors of engineered products in England have with their
manufacturer partners. He found the biggest problems involved deliveries,
pricing policies, the existence of house accounts, competition, poor planning
and working relationships with the manufacturer, and poor sales support by
manufacturer salespeople. A more recent case study in the British Chemical
Industry examined the advantages and disadvantages of distribution (Brown
and Herring 1995). The authors suggest that the advantages outweigh the
disadvantages except for high technology and/or high volume customers and
with a small number of customers buying commodity products. Such advice
92 JOURNAL OF BUSINESS-TO-BUSINESS MARKETING
appears pretty consistent with what is generally practiced. While there are
other contributions, most are very narrow in focus and tangential to the
problems of distributors.
Manufacturers Reps and Agents. The work on manufacturers reps or
agents is even more limited. An early work by Sibley and Teas (1979), based
on responses from 202 manufacturers reps who belonged to state associa-
tions of manufacturers reps, examined factors differentiating good from bad
relationships between a manufacturers rep and their principle. The authors
found that the most important variable was sales support on the part of the
manufacturer followed by communication and organization by and between
the representative and the principle. Bellizzi and Glacken (1986) describe
how a manufacturer can build a better rep organization. They provide guide-
lines which include developing a long term commitment, providing good
training and orientation, making it easy for reps to make money, and being
honest with reps among others. In a similar but more narrow piece, Mehr
(1992) provides advice about how to find reps, suggesting a matching pro-
cess and using customers or potential customers to help identify the best
potential representatives.
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Behavioral Issues. The behavioral aspects of channels has a long and rich
history dating from the 1960s and the work of Louis Stem and his doctoral
students. Much of the early work focused on conflict and its resolution as
well as power and its use and abuse. More recently, Frazier (1983) has
suggested more of a process framework suggesting that interorganizational
exchanges can be framed in terms of an initiation process, an implementation
process, and a review process. The Dwyer, Schurr, and Oh (1987) relation-
ships model takes a somewhat similar perspective.
While behavioral literature and empirical testing has continued to expand,
the focus has shifted to the increasing complexity of the models tested rather
than new theoretical perspectives or constructs. The work is characterized by
a broad variety of sampling frames and contexts. Ford (1978) used scenarios
to examine what factors led to stability in channels. He found that power and
clear role expectations were the biggest contributors to channel stability. In
another early study, Sibley and Michie (1981) using a sample from the farm
equipment industry, found that using non-coercive sources of power were
much more likely to result in high dealer performance than using coercive
power. A more recent study by Frazier and Rody (1991) suggested the use of
reciprocity in terms of influence and found support for different sources of
power. A study of franchisees and franchisors in the fast food business (Dant
and Schul 1992) indicated problem-solving to be the most general model of
conflict resolution. Purohit and Staelin (1994), utilizing a student sample in a
simulation, found support, in terms of power usage, for a relational model of
David A. Reid and Richard E. Plank 93
nels. They also stress two other issues, adaptability and constraints, which are
critical in channel design. A second interesting and valuable article, especial-
ly for managers, is one by McGrath and Hardy (1987). They identify six
critical pitfalls (bypassing channels, over saturation, too many links in the
chain, new channels, cost-cutters, and inconsistencies) that almost always
lead to conflict and suggest ways to avoid each pitfall. The final paper of note
is by Mohr and Nevin (1990), who develop a theoretical approach to under-
standing communication in marketing channels. They postulate that channel
structure, climate, and power conditions, when combined with communica-
tion strategies, lead to qualitative outcomes such as coordination, satisfaction,
and commitment, as well as better performance.
little research to show for it. The recent work in partnerships appears promis-
ing and reinforces findings from previous studies such as, for example, the
finding that communication and non-coercive power are conducive to trust
among the parties and leads to more satisfaction on the part of both parties.
There is limited work on distributors or other marketing intermediaries
and almost nothing on manufacturers reps. There are some good managerial
discussions on channel management, but a limited amount on the selection of
channel partners. Again, as with the behavioral stream, much of this is informa-
tive, but so fragmented as to be difficult to offer much guidance to managers.
Channel management still requires a great deal of descriptive work. Work
in the area of defining distribution partners, such as distributors and manufac-
turers sales agents, is minimal. The behavioral issues are well researched,
although as noted earlier, are narrow in scope and context. The work on
partnerships provides interesting insights about the make-up of channel rela-
tionships. There is good normative material on how to think through the
channels of distribution problem, but little empirical work which actually
supports the issues raised.
Among the additional questions in need of research are the following:
room for much development and testing. Conflict, and subsequent good and
bad outcomes, needs more study, as does the role of power, sources and
types, in channel relationships. Literature on motivating partners from the
perspective of the manufacturer is also somewhat fragmented.
Literature on logistics in business marketing publications is minimal, but
much progress has been made in identifying best practices. Over the past
twenty years much has changed in how leading edge companies handle their
inventory issues, how they handle materials, how they use transportation, and
how logistics functions are integrated within the firm and between firms to
form a more competitive system. Logistics is moving rapidly toward a supply
chain or value chain framework as more companies recognize the value of
integrating their time and place utility activities with those of their supplier
and distribution partners. The concept of supply chain management has the
ability to integrate distribution and logistics, but even that concept has several
different perspectives which are not in agreement.
MARKETING COMMUNICATIONS
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This final review section deals with the topics within the area of promo-
tion. We begin by examining the work done in advertising, sales promotion,
public relations, and general promotion. We then examine the selling and
sales management literature which has been done in a business marketing
context.
Advertising
In summary, the work in the area of business advertising lacks any clear
programmatic direction. While some work has been done in the area of
advertising effectiveness that has provided normative direction, there is very
little that could be considered a cohesive stream of research. Most advertising
research continues to be focused on end consumers. While there have been
several papers which furnish some normative insights into the practice of
advertising in business markets, little is known, even from a descriptive
perspective, about how the work is actually done. One wonders, as Paustian
(1996) so aptly put it, why business-to-business advertising is the black sheep
of marketing communications. This is especially puzzling given that it is
estimated that in 1995 total marketing communications expenditures were
$138 billion. Of that, business-to-business advertising is estimated at $51.7
billion or 37.4% of the total expenditures (Paustian 1996). Kosek (1996),
providing more detail, notes that the average business-to-business advertising
budget was $4.6 million, although the figure ranged considerably by industry.
Given these expenditures, the research and publication activity in this area is
clearly insufficient. At a minimum, given the level of business-to-business
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Sales Promotion
value of the medium (1994). The literature on trade shows generally consists
of either empirical pieces, primarily descriptive, or prescriptive pieces deal-
ing with how to use trade shows. Most of the literature is primarily U.S.
based, but a significant number of pieces have been written about doing trade
shows in foreign locations or for exporting (e.g., Bello and Barksdale 1989;
OHara, Palumbo, and Herbig 1993). Examples of prescriptive pieces include
Bonoma (1983); Hawes (1984); Bellizzi and Lipps (1984); Sahsi and Perretty
(1992); and Shoham (1992). These prescriptive pieces all suggest that trade
shows are very useful promotional devices for business marketers when
properly managed.
A number of empirical articles stand out for their contribution to our
knowledge about trade shows. Young (1987) provides a good picture of the
breadth of trade show practice. Work by Kerin and Cron (1987) examined
aspects of financing and the performance of trade shows, while Gopalakrish-
na and Williams (1992) examined the planning and performance assessment
of exhibitors. Kijewski, Yoon and Young (1993) provided evidence on how
exhibitors actually select trade shows. Lilien (1983) empirically derived the
trade show decision process. Bello and Barksdale (1989) examined how
companies use trade shows for export. Bello (1992) also examined trade
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sales promotion articles are also of particular interest. The first, Glover
(1991), examines the attitudes of medical supply distributors toward
manufacturer promotions. Although narrow in scope, the research points out
that in choosing forms of sales promotion both the customer and the distribu-
tion partner need to be considered. Two other articles examine the value of
direct mail promotions. One, by Chakrabarti, Feinman, and Fuentevilla
(1981), is a normative piece that discusses the targeting of technical informa-
tion to organizational positions, i.e., people in the buying center by title. The
other, by Vredenbury and Droge (1987), discusses the value of company
newsletters and magazines.
In summary, research into sales promotion has dealt heavily with both the
use of trade shows and personal inducements as techniques. Our knowledge of
trade shows is becoming well developed both descriptively and prescriptively.
Little or no research has examined the value and impact of brochures and such
common techniques as spiffs used in distribution sales, or the general use of
sales incentives to either company or distributors salespeople. Theory devel-
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S What effect will the new technology have on traditional sales promo-
tion activity such as catalogs?
S What are best practices of business marketing companies in using elec-
tronic commerce for sales promotion activities?
S What is the value of trade shows, under what conditions, and how can
we get more value from this activity?
S How can we better integrate and measure the added value of sales
promotion activity?
Public Relations
Virtually no work has been done in assessing the role of public relations as
it relates to business marketing. There is one non-empirical descriptive article
by Williams (1983) and a major review piece by Williams and Gopalakrishna
(1994), but no attention has been paid to how it does or should fit into the
overall promotional mix in business markets. Some research on corporate
David A. Reid and Richard E. Plank 103
image has been conducted. Dowling (1986) wrote a general piece on how to
manage corporate image. Vos (1987) is somewhat more explicit, describing
how to build an image for a service firm. And Sims (1979) has the only
empirical piece which deals with measuring the image of a firm and is a good
example of how to conduct research in this area.
Three other articles are of interest. The first, by Tongren (1979), examines
the use and power of public relations in the selling of nuclear power. The
second, by Rabino and Moore (1989), discusses the management of new
product announcements in the computer industry. And finally, in a more
general piece on products, Williams (1988) writes about the benefits of prod-
uct publicity.
S What are the costs and benefits of public relations campaigns? How
does one measure those costs and benefits?
S How should public relations be integrated into overall promotional
planning in business markets?
S What is the current state of public relations best practices among busi-
ness marketing companies?
S What is the role of the public relations function in handling crises?
General Promotion
The first and most commonly researched topic here is telemarketing. Cop-
pett and Voorhees (1983); Moncreif, Lamb, and Dielman (1986); and Mon-
creif, Shipp, Lamb, and Cravens (1989) provide normative advice on how to
use telemarketing to supplement the sales force, while Marshall and Vreden-
burg (1988) and Zibrun (1987) provide empirical support for how to do that.
The next area focuses on comparing the effects of different promotional
elements. Indicative of this research is Parasuraman (1981), who did an early
comparison of the relative importance of different promotional tools. He
found peer recommendations and personal selling to be the most important,
followed by trade shows. Park, Roth, and Jacques (1988) examined, within a
single company advertising program, the impact of advertising and promo-
tion from the perspective of direct communications effects and indirect sales-
facilitating communication effects. Their findings suggest that direct commu-
nication effects are perceived to have the smallest market impact. From a
more normative perspective, Powers (1989) discussed conditions under
which increasing sales promotion versus adding salespeople is the most ap-
propriate strategy. Ghingold (1988), in a normative work, attempted to bridge
theory and practice in the sales/promotion allocation decision.
There have been two general theory/review articles. Schurr (1982) sug-
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Personal Selling
Ford (1977), Churchill, Ford, Hartley, and Walker (1985) provide a meta-
analysis of some 116 studies on sales performance. They examined empirical
findings on the impact of aptitude, skill, motivation, role, personal factors,
and organizational environmental factors on performance--identifying 1653
separate findings in the six categories relating to sales performance. Many of
these findings were based on industrial sales data. However, the percentage
of actual business-to-business selling studies examined was not provided.
While the authors are careful to point out the limitations of meta-analyses, the
findings indicate that no single variable accounts for a very large proportion
of the variance in performance. Role variables had the strongest association;
organizational and environmental factors the weakest. However, when ac-
counting for sampling error, the real variation rankings were personal fac-
tors, skill, role variables, aptitude, motivation, and organizational/environ-
mental factors.
A second major stream of research on sales performance is based on the
modeling work of Weitz (1981), later expanded by Weitz, Sujan, and Sujan
(1986). Their theoretical perspective, commonly referred to as adaptive sell-
ing, emphasizes the importance of the sales process and argues for adaptive-
ness as a framework for examining the process. Weitz and his colleagues
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surement of sales effort was a general three item scale measuring the quantity
of the work performed. Research on sales performance by Plank and Reid
(1994) expanded on the concept of sales behaviors as playing a pivotal role in
understanding sales performance. They identify two major types of sales
behaviors, customer interaction and noncustomer interaction, and note that
the quality of performance of those sales behaviors may be more important
than how often they are performed.
Trust has always been thought to be a very important factor in sales
performance. Prior to the 1980s no empirical work had investigated the
relationship between trust of the salesperson and sales success. The last
twenty years, however, has seen work by Schurr and Ozanne (1985); Swan
and Nolan (1985); Swan, Trawick, and Silva (1985); Swan and Trawick
(1987); Swan, Trawick, Rink, and Roberts (1988); Hawes, Mast and Swan
(1989); Henthorne, LaTour and Williams (1992); and Bejou, Wray, and In-
gram (1996)--all examining various aspects of trust within the buyer/seller
dyad. Findings from this research clearly demonstrate the importance of trust
in effective buyer and seller relationships. It should be noted that the trust
literature spans at least ten disciplines and that much of the work in other
disciplines, such as management and social psychology, overlaps and adds to
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salespeople fail. Both Ingram, Schwepter, and Hutson (1992) and Morris,
LaForge and Allen (1994) found overlapping behavioral causes of failure.
Despite its obvious value, this area remains relatively unexplored.
Influence and Persuasion. Despite its obvious importance, surprisingly
little work has addressed the general topic of influence and persuasion in
business-to-business sales and, specifically, their impact on sales perfor-
mance. The most significant research on influence was by Spiro and Perreault
(1979). They identified types of influence strategies (specifically, expert,
legitimate, referent, ingratiation, and impression management) and examined
the mix of specific types used by salespeople in different situations. The
research indicated that salespeople used different combinations of these in-
fluence types and that other situational variables, such as personal relation-
ship, type of product/service, and purchase type, influenced how the influ-
ence types were combined. While offering interesting opportunities for
additional research, this area has failed to attract any further research efforts.
Work on persuasion has not fared much better. Funkhouser (1983) present-
ed a theoretical perspective referred to as the action theory of persuasion
which was defined as a process of information management aimed at engi-
neering those decisions, the decisions being the actions by the persuader.
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It should be noted that team selling and teamwork can have somewhat
different meanings. Team selling can merely refer to the salesperson as the
quarterback of the sales team or selling center of the organization. This view
is reflected in work by Hutt, Johnston, and Ronchetto (1985), who develop
the concept of a selling center and its relationships with the customer buying
center. Sales teams can also refer to the teaming of salespeople in different
companies to formulate a solution for the customer, a practice that has a long
history in the computer business. Key or major account selling is also often
associated with team selling research.
Key account systems, where major or key accounts are assigned to specif-
ic salespeople or groups of salespeople, are fairly common. However, while
clearly important, key/major accounts have received little research attention
in the academic journals. In business markets, both Barrett (1986) and Pardo,
Salle, and Spencer (1995) have examined key account selling, the former
making a case for the customer-driven nature of why key account selling
works, namely that customers require it, and the latter in a case study format
showing how it may be effective. Interested readers should be aware of the
work done in Europe, specifically Great Britain, in this area; a good starting
point is Milman and Wilson (1995).
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their relationship to performance. While there are many issues covered in this
research area, there are some very basic questions that still need examination.
Adaptive selling is an important construct, but it has never been comprehen-
sively defined. At a macro level, it can be described as the ability of the
salesperson to adapt to the needs of the person or firm they are selling to. At a
micro level, however, the answer is not as clear. For example, what is it that is
being adapted--is it communication content, communication style, formula-
tion of the benefit package, some combination, or something else? A clearer
theoretical definition of adaptive selling should also result in better measures
of the construct.
Research is also needed in defining what is meant by a relationship and the
level at which it is being viewed (e.g., salesperson-buyer level or company-
company level). For example, a salesperson can have a relationship with the
buyer, for example, and the two companies as well can be said to have a
relationship. Recent empirical work by Iccobucci and Ostrom (1996) repre-
sents a first effort at addressing these issues. Work is also needed to address
the stages involved in relationship development (Dwyer, Schurr, and Oh
1987; Wilson 1995) and how they impact sales performance.
One other issue which seems appropriate to address is the notion of value
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S How can salespeople best identify both the value orientation of the buy-
er and the most effective value proposition to present to the buyer?
Sales Training
Sales training as an area has had only limited coverage in the academic
literature. Most of the work on sales training has been done by non-academ-
ics and has been published in two managerially-oriented, non-academic jour-
nals (Training and Development Journal and Training) that, as previously
noted, are not included in this review. The academic work in this area can
basically be grouped into descriptive empirical studies and prescriptive non-
empirical studies.
Descriptive empirical studies are quite common. Erffmeyer, Russ and Hair
(1991) documented how companies assess their need for training and how
they evaluate the training results. Honeycutt and colleagues (e.g., Honeycutt,
Ford, and Tanner 1994; Honeycutt and Stevenson 1989; Honeycutt, Howe,
and Ingram 1993) assessed who does sales training, how sales training pro-
grams are evaluated, and the shortcomings of sales training programs. Peter-
son (1990) examined sales managers perceptions of the effectiveness of
various sales training methods. He found that well conceived objectives,
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relevant content, appropriate techniques, trainer skill, and who is trained were
all factors that led to successful sales training. Russ, Hair, Erffmeyer and
Easterling (1989) examined the usage and perceived effectiveness of high
tech approaches to sales training. In a slightly different twist, McQuiston and
Walters (1989) looked at the evaluative criteria of industrial buyers and drew
implications for training from that analysis. Finally, Puri (1993) identified
managements perceptions of where sales training is weak. Implications of
these findings for sales training were: (1) the need to establish formal sales training
programs, (2) training programs must be geared to customers, (3) managing time
and territory is critical, (4) relating to customers is important, and (5) product
knowledge, while important, needs to be integrated with sales situations. With
respect to the fifth point, what Puri seems to be suggesting is that knowledge
is not much use unless salespeople are trained in how to use it.
There are only a few prescriptive non-empirical articles on sales training.
Dubinsky (1981) addressed the impact of sales training on sales performance.
He suggested that the psychological impact of sales training needs to be
investigated as well as the salespersons productivity. Kaminski and Clark
(1987) addressed the readability of sales training manuals while Kortge
(1993) made an argument for linking sales training to the product life cycle.
Summary of Sales Training Research
The academic business marketing literature does not adequately reflect the
importance of sales training. This is a research area that needs more attention.
David A. Reid and Richard E. Plank 113
Much of the work in the area of sales motivation and rewards has not been
done within the context of business-to-business sales, and thus is not within
the boundaries of this review. It is clear from the literature that salespeople
need to be motivated to increase effort, that the motivation is or can be
controlled by sales management to some degree, and that the resulting im-
provements in performance and satisfaction lead to lower turnover rates,
reinforced motivation, and increased effort. One neglected area is research
that assesses and addresses the quality of the salespersons effort. Both Sujan,
Weitz, and Sujan (1988) and Plank and Reid (1994) have argued that effort,
in and of itself, is not sufficient and that quality of effort is likely to have a
greater impact on effectiveness. The recent research by Kohli and Jaworski
David A. Reid and Richard E. Plank 115
(1994) on impact of coworkers is important for the new team selling orienta-
tions that are taking place. Overall, we know a lot more about motivating and
compensating salespeople effectively than we did twenty years ago, but there
is much to be dealt with.
This area has been well researched, mainly from the perspective of expec-
tancy theory. A number of areas such as role conflict and role ambiguity and
the problems with those issues (e.g., stress and propensity to leave) have been
explored in considerable detail. However, as with other sales research, this
area also suffers from a lack of a process perspective. A classic work by Cron
(1984) on the sales career life cycle and work on stress and burnout by Sager
(1994), Singh, Goolsby and Rhoads (1994), and Verbeke (1997) provides
insight into the time and process aspects of the phenomenon.
Compensation is still an issue for most companies--how much to pay
salespeople, what is too little and what is too much, and how much does one
have to pay to attract the kinds of people who will do the job well. There is a
tremendous literature in management and psychology that deals with this
issue in various contexts, but the anecdotal literature from the trade press still
indicates that there are more questions than answers. Only limited research
has been done on how we reward teams and when is it appropriate. But as
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sales becomes more complex, more team selling is bound to evolve, making
this a very relevant question. Additional issues in need of research include:
S When is a team approach appropriate, what are best practices with re-
gards to sales teams?
S How effective and appropriate are various types of sales contests in the
longer run and what are best practices?
S How can job analysis and job descriptions reduce role conflict and ambi-
guity and how could they, how are they, and how should they be done?
S What kinds of guidelines should be used to determine the most ap-
propriate forms of compensation to use in specific situations?
have been essentially two areas of inquiry. One is the empirical examination
of how sales management is conducted and what impacts on how it is done
and the other is prescriptive work aimed at providing guidance to practicing
sales managers.
The primary empirical contributions revolve around the work of Anderson
and Oliver (1987), Oliver and Anderson (1994, 1995), and Cravens, Ingram,
La Forge, and Young (1993), who examine the issue of evaluating sales
performance using outcome or behaviorally-based evaluation systems. Their
work is in line with the increasing trend in sales performance to focus on
behaviors as mediators of sales performance. While their work primarily
represents descriptive or theory driven efforts to understand the system types
and when they are used, it is also potentially very prescriptive. Their findings
indicate that decisions about evaluation, supervision, and compensation are
all interrelated. Obviously, the cultures of companies are both impacted by
and/or represented by the evaluation systems. Some companies are outcome
control-oriented, others are behaviorally-oriented, and many are hybrids of
both types. It is reasonable to suspect that hybrid systems are likely to be the
most effective for many firms.
As would be expected, the evaluation system, coupled with supervision
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can be used to compare a group of salespeople against one another and, using
the concept of sensitivity analysis, show how managerial recommendations
can be developed. Muczyk and Gable (1987) provide a comprehensive dis-
cussion of the development and use of a performance appraisal system.
Locander and Staples (1978) provide an excellent discussion of using behav-
iorally-anchored rating scales, an important methodology in behavioral per-
formance systems.
Other Sales Management Issues. Another interesting stream of research
concerns the allocation and the use of resources. Included are topics such as
routing salespeople, determining sales force size, allocating sales calls, defin-
ing sales territories. Historically, there has been a lot of literature on defining
the size of the sales force and routing consumer goods salespeople. These
topic areas have been subjected to numerous model building exercises. Yet,
very little research on those topics has been in business marketing (Ferguson
1980; Meridan 1982). However, led by David Cravens, Raymond LaForge
and their colleagues, there has been an extensive discussion of the general
problem of sales force deployment (LaForge and Cravens 1982; Cravens and
LaForge 1983; LaForge, Young, and Hamm 1983; LaForge, Cravens, and
Young 1986; Cravens and LaForge 1986; and Cravens, Moncrief, Lamb, and
Dielman 1990). This work has suggested four types of models--single factor,
portfolio, judgment-based, and empirical--as methods for account effort al-
location. Models which incorporate multiple factors would seem to be most
useful. The movement toward more behavioral kinds of performance analy-
118 JOURNAL OF BUSINESS-TO-BUSINESS MARKETING
sis, most of which has never been incorporated in most quantitative models,
argues in favor of the multiple factor models.
Very little has been done in the areas of hiring and firing of salespeople.
Given the attention this topic receives in the trade/managerial journals, one
would expect a large researched base. Most of what has been done appears in
the personnel journals and in many of the mainstream psychology journals
rather than marketing-oriented journals. Of the work appearing in the busi-
ness marketing journals, early discussions by Darmon and Shapiro (1980)
suggested that recruitment of salespeople was important. Johnston and Coo-
per (1981) looked at the sales force selection process using a case study
approach. They found that, using conjoint analysis, they could model the
rankings of the specific sales manager with some accuracy. They also found
that at different phases of the hiring process, different factors were empha-
sized and that hiring was an iterative, not perfectly sequential, process. On an
international note, Avlonitis, Boyle, and Kovremenoc (1986) empirically
examined the matching of salespeople jobs using a European sample. Glisan
and Hawes (1990) recognized the importance of creativity in selling and
discussed how to select creative salespeople. Using a fairly diverse sample,
Dubinsky and Ingram (1983) examined first line management qualifications.
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The sales management area encompasses a great many topics that have
received varying levels of attention. Evaluation systems have received broad
coverage. The study of behavioral versus output systems continues to be an
interesting and important research stream. Sales force deployment has moved
in a new direction with the recognition of the overlap of many issues. Howev-
David A. Reid and Richard E. Plank 119
er, many areas remain under-researched. There has been little done in the
employment area or in the various aspects of sales management performance.
Very little has been done using international perspectives or international
samples. Exceptions are Hill and Allaway (1993) who empirically show how
companies manage foreign sales forces, Honeycutt and Ford (1995) who
provide some normative guidelines for managing an international sales force,
and Edwards, Cummings and Schlachter (1984) who discussed employment
appraisal from an international perspective. However, Cravens and col-
leagues have done some work in the area of international sales management,
mainly testing concepts developed in the US in other countries, and continue
to do so (e.g., Cravens et al. 1992; Babakus et al. 1996). First level sales skills
and behaviors have received almost no research, other than some empirical
work on what companies look at for promotion. Issues involved in restructur-
ing the sales force, something that is becoming far more common as the pace
of change in the marketplace has increased, have been mostly ignored. The
impact of the whole quality movement has also been ignored in the sales
literature. Only one general paper (Ellis and Raymond 1993) has discussed
sales force quality and there has been nothing to date on TQM and selling (it
should be noted that at the time this article was being written a special issue
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of The Journal of Marketing Theory and Practice was being planned on this
topic). Sales force automation, seemingly very important, has had some
limited discussion in the general sales literature, but not to any extent within
the context of business markets. Of the few articles on sales force automation,
Hill and Swenson (1994) looked at the impact of electronic data exchange on
the sales function and several articles dealt with expert systems. Despite the
vast amount of literature to date on general sales management, there continue
to be numerous research opportunities in this area. The following questions
should be of interest to researchers:
S What are current best industry practices in sales performance and effec-
tiveness evaluation?
S How do significant others such as inside sales and technical people af-
fect the sales process and how should they be integrated into the sales
management process? Any best practices?
S What leadership models are being used by business marketers in the
sales management function and how much thought has been given by
the firm in this area?
S How does the field sales manager and senior sales management best in-
stitute change?
Summary of Marketing Communications Research
As would be expected, given the importance and the amount of money
spent on sales, communication issues in business marketing have tended to
120 JOURNAL OF BUSINESS-TO-BUSINESS MARKETING
focus around the sales function. Progress has been made in understanding sales
performance, clearly a very difficult area. Progress has also been made in
understanding the motivation of salespeople and, to some extent, managers (at
least within an expectancy theory framework): The remainder of the sales and
sales management field is much weaker. There has been almost no research in
the areas of sales training, TQM and the application of the quality philosophy
to sales and sales management. Work in sales and sales management has not
been process-driven, either in academic research, or business practice.
Work in public relations, as previously noted, is basically nonexistent.
Advertising and sales promotion have received some attention. Both topics
provide rich descriptive work, if not theory. Sales promotion research has
focused primarily on trade shows and the use of personal inducements in the
sales process. Advertising, while studied more broadly, suffers from a lack of
programmatic research.
While progress has been uneven, marketing communications research has
made substantial contributions to our understanding of business marketing.
The vast number of descriptive works have provided a solid foundation upon
which to build theory.
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SUMMARY
Over twenty years have passed since Frederick Webster (Webster 1978)
asked the question has industrial marketing come of age? Our answer,
were he to ask this question today, is a resounding yes! Business marketing
now has three journals devoted to the field, two more than was the case in
1978. Major conferences now regularly have dedicated tracks on business
marketing. In addition, there have been several special conferences devoted
exclusively to business marketing and business marketing has its own Special
Interest Group within the American Marketing Association. The number of
people publishing has also increased, with over one hundred authors that
have published at least three articles in the field. The increased research has
also increased the subjects stature and presence in undergraduate and gradu-
ate course offerings at many colleges and universities.
As with marketing in general, business marketing spans many topical
areas. Throughout our analysis we have provided suggestions for future
research and made comments on the state of research on business marketing.
Table 5 summarizes the fields shortages and surpluses based on the literature
reviewed and the authors interpretation of that literature. As shown in the
Table we feel there are far more shortages than surpluses in our understand-
ing of business marketing, despite the significant advances made in the field
in the past twenty years. We do not believe that we are generally at the stage
where we have tested one or more particular theories extensively enough that
further research could not yield additional insights and knowledge.
David A. Reid and Richard E. Plank 121
Research Issues
The field has clearly taken many great strides since 1978. In compiling the
database of business marketing literature for this study, a total of 2,194
articles were identified, and of those 1,288 were found to be empirical. With
respect to empirical research, a number of methodological issues need to be
addressed. For example, despite repeated calls over the years for more longi-
tudinal studies and varied data collection methods, empirical research contin-
ues to be dominated by cross-sectional survey designs, mostly collected
using the mail questionnaires. Few efforts have been made in using or devel-
oping other methods of obtaining data or conducting research. Also, much of
the research has assumed a black box or input-output type of perspective
when in fact a time-based, process perspective may have more accurately
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captured the true nature of the phenomenon being studied. Little headway has
also been made in the area of multiple respondent data collection and analysis
that is so crucial to expanding our understanding of organizational buying
behavior and buyer-seller relationships. Over the years, the reviews of OBB, in
particular, have repeatedly pointed out various methodological problems. The
problems identified have been remarkably similar from review to review. Yet
most of these problems, as their continuing reappearance in the reviews over
the years would suggest, have not been addressed. Existing research notwith-
standing, it can certainly be questioned whether one truly understands how a
firm made its purchase decision, when several people were involved, but only
one persons perceptions were obtained for the study. Similarly, can we truly
understand buyer-seller relationships by only talking to one of the parties
involved in the relationship? What is the effect of this missing information
on the results we have obtained to date? This situation is further exacerbated
by the lack of replication efforts which makes these questions extremely diffi-
cult to answer and also makes it difficult to draw many cause and effect
inferences with any degree of confidence. And while many acknowledge these
points, the fact remains that these issues continue to be ignored. These are
challenging issues but certainly issues that once addressed will have a signifi-
cant impact on the advancement of the field of business marketing.
It was somewhat surprising and frustrating that many of the earlier empiri-
cal articles we examined failed to adequately report specifics on the sample
frame and respondents, thus making it difficult, if not impossible, to judge the
external validity of the particular research. Scaling problems were also pres-
122 JOURNAL OF BUSINESS-TO-BUSINESS MARKETING
Shortages Surpluses
Methodological Issues Methodological Issues
Programmatic research Static cross-sectional research
Longitudinal research Black box research (in general)
Experimental research Organizational buyer behavior models
Multiple sample research Black box sales performance research
Sample reporting Black box new product/service research
Validation of measure reporting Mail survey response
Process oriented research
Middle range theory testing
International research
International research methodology
Topical Issues Topical Issues
ent and continue to persist. Many multiple item scales are used without
adequately addressing reliability and validity issues beyond coefficient alpha,
and in some cases even that information is not provided. Thus, the reader has
no way of assessing the validity of the scale or whether it is actually measur-
ing the same construct(s). Such problems make comparisons between studies
questionable. Recent work has been much better and, as was noted, may be
due to the large increase in the use of structural equation modeling reported in
the last ten years that deals with reporting scaling results.
Theory building efforts have also been mixed. Only limited success has
been achieved in developing mid-range theory, which essentially offers a
theoretical perspective that provides for prediction and explanation of a limit-
ed, but well defined range of phenomena (e.g., Walker, Churchill, and Ford
1977). In some areas, such as organizational buying behavior, we have seen
numerous models and theoretical perspectives proposed but few that have
received any significant empirical testing. However, in other areas, such as
advertising, the work has been mostly descriptive and/or normative in nature.
Perhaps one of the most serious problems in the field, in general, is the
lack of programmatic research. Much of the research to date consists of one
shot studies, with little or no follow up work, and few linkages to other
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have reported such differences in the trade press and the multitude of doing
business in trade books clearly note the differences in ethical standards and
rules in different parts of the world. Given the global nature of business
marketing, more research is needed to document these purported differences
and to examine how they impact businesses and their decision making.
International Research. Global marketing has taken on greater importance
in the academic world over the past twenty years. This is evident by the
increase in academic journals in the field. In fact, there are currently at least
ten journals which are explicitly international marketing journals. Many
more journals are actively seeking research dealing with an international
issue or involving data collection from more than one country. However,
there continues to be only a limited amount of research partnering across
country boundaries by faculty in our discipline.
The business marketing literature has examined a wide range of interna-
tional marketing issues. However, we believe future international research
should focus on examining the differences in various aspects of the market-
ing process in differing international venues. For example, how is selling
different in different societies and cultures? Is there a need to focus on
different sets of behaviors to get the selling job done well, or is there a
generalized set of behaviors, that when done well lead to selling success in all
cultures? Additional areas of study might include new product acceptance,
how organizations determine the value of an offering, and technology accep-
tance. The global nature of business markets means that important marketing
David A. Reid and Richard E. Plank 125
insight into the kinds of changes that are taking place in purchasing organiza-
tions--changes that have either not been addressed or receive limited discus-
sion in the academic literature. Examples of these areas include integrated
supply marketing, JIT II, barter, and target pricing. While leading edge orga-
nizations are adopting or experimenting with these areas, the academic pur-
chasing management literature has had little or nothing to say about them.
Business marketers seem to be lagging their purchasing counterparts. Pur-
chasing (or sourcing and supply management, as it is now being referred to)
and purchasing practice appear to be more forward thinking. If business
marketers are to keep pace, they need to understand not only how companies
think through decisions from a behavioral perspective, but also the processes
and mechanisms they employ. Understanding how the purchasing process
defines value for the individuals as well as the organization is the crux of
understanding how to market to an organization.
Organizational Buying Behavior Research. In line with Johnston and Le-
win (1996), we feel that the field of OBB has enough models and that now
the emphasis needs to shift to testing the models. Unlike most areas in
business marketing, OBB has been reviewed a number of times over the
years. Year after year, these reviews have pointed out similar problems that
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short on the why. A focus on value may finally yield greater insights into the
why of the purchasing decision.
Buyer-Seller Relationships Research. This is clearly the growth area in
business marketing research. Numerous authors have over the years advo-
cated the dyad or even the network as a unit of analysis. Unfortunately, the
unit of analysis for most research continues to be only one piece of the dyad
or network. With the growing emphasis on cultivating relationships rather
than transactional exchanges, the use of dyads and even networks to under-
stand marketing exchange is increasing.
The marketing literature, especially over the last few years, abounds with
references to relationship marketing and its importance. However, exactly
what the concept entails and what the marketing implications of it are remain
less than clear. Definitions vary, with most people defining it simply as
developing longer term relationships as opposed to transactional exchanges.
Work is also needed in addressing the types of relationships that are common-
ly encountered and their implications for business marketers.
Marketing Sciences
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Market Research
The business marketing literature has seen some significant effort in areas
of market research. As noted previously, the primary area is that of increasing
return rates for mail surveys. Since much of the work by both academics and
practitioners concerns itself with surveys, the improvement of survey re-
sponse rates is a laudable effort. The research, while mixed, does suggest
methods to improve response rates and thus make samples potentially more
valid and less biased. There have been a number of review articles which
provide succinct guidance on getting better response rates and all have been
quoted in this paper. However, there are a number of issues that have not been
examined in depth that probably should be. For example, newer technologies
such as the Internet and fax machines have not been explored in detail as to
their usage as survey delivery mechanisms. Research in these areas is only
just beginning and both media represent other methods besides mail ques-
tionnaires for getting survey responses.
There has been some discussion of how to collect data from multiple
respondents. This has come about as researchers have recognized the com-
plexity of organizational buying processes and have documented the notion
of buying groups or centers, both formal and informal, which typically con-
sist of more than one person. While we know we have a problem both
conceptually and methodologically, there is no readily apparent solution. For
example, if we collect data from multiple respondents using key respondents
and exhaustive snowballing we run into non-response problems as well as
128 JOURNAL OF BUSINESS-TO-BUSINESS MARKETING
Forecasting Research
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As has been seen in this review, this area remains almost non-existent.
There was a brief flurry on computer expert systems and some attempts at
computer models such as CALLPLAN (Lodish 1971). Bettis-Outland and
McFarland (1998) review in detail the research activity in this area, which
encompasses sales force size modeling, resource allocation, sales force per-
formance and compensation. Despite its importance, there is almost nothing
on sales automation. While the academic literature says little about it, Sales
and Marketing Management has provided many examples of how companies
use computers for sales automation and a major trade organization exists
which is dedicated solely to sales automation. Academic literature, however,
David A. Reid and Richard E. Plank 129
Product/Services
This area has been very prolific, primarily driven by the work of Cooper
and colleagues, but many other researchers have also made a significant
impact. However, this area suffers from similar problems as the sales perfor-
mance literature. Recent work by Cooper (1990) on the Stage Gate model has
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pointed out that new product development is a process that occurs over time.
Most of the early research and much of the continuing research examines
cross-sectionally the impact of various issues on the overall success of a
particular product or project. However, as the Stage Gate process argues,
different activities are likely to vary in importance and have differential
impacts at different points in time. There is a need to understand how the
process impacts the output, not just the input-output research that has primarily
characterized this area. There is limited work examining specific parts of the new
product process, but this work is mostly narrow in scope and does not connect to
the entire process. Readers should again be cautioned that much of the work on
new products in business markets appears in a wide variety of journals from both
the management and engineering disciplines, and that while there appears to
be a great deal of overlap, some interesting perspectives appear in other
literatures not covered in this review. In addition, continued work on the
diffusion of innovations paradigm also crosses many disciplines, not just the
limited coverage in the specific business marketing literature.
Other than the product elimination research there has been very little
programmatic research in the product management literature. There has been
minimal work dealing with the people involved in product management and
exactly what the job entails. Much more needs to be done to define the
130 JOURNAL OF BUSINESS-TO-BUSINESS MARKETING
Services Research
The services research agenda really breaks down to two issues, those of
how to manage a service business (i.e., the offering is a pure or mostly service
offering) and the notion of the role of service in the product offering. As
suggested previously, the notion of value as perceived by the buyer is going
to be key in these kinds of businesses and certainly with service as an added-
value or necessity for a product offering.
The research in the area is fragmented. Much of the SERVQUAL research,
we would argue, may not be relevant to business markets unless it is directly
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applicable to the way the buyer values the offering. The fact that measure-
ments of SERVQUAL are very mixed from a reliability and validity stand-
point point to this issue among others. As had been suggested, many purchas-
ing departments establish formal sets of measures of supplier performance.
These are the value measures for the buying firm and whether a marketer is
dealing with products or services, the job is to comply with the necessary
performance measures or to change them.
Pricing
Pricing Research
This area has little specific research in the business marketing literature.
However, as noted previously, it is the subject of a great deal of research
effort which appears in very specialized journals. The end consumer in an
exchange, be they a business or an individual, derives time and place utility in
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large measure from the activities of logistics and physical distribution (or
materials management from a buyer or purchasing perspective).
Promotion
Advertising Research
tions. While this work strictly focuses on advertising and ignores the sales
communication process, the concept of integrating all communications
makes sense from a pragmatic perspective and business marketers need to
heed this perspective in terms of linking their various promotional messages
together.
In general, this area has had a significant amount of research over the
years. The most researched area is clearly that of sales performance. Yet, as
was shown in Churchill, Ford, Hartley, and Walkers (1985) meta analysis,
there has been only limited success in predicting sales performance. Research
in the area of sales performance is just beginning to move from a black
box or input-output approach to more of a process orientation. However,
almost all of the work to date continues to be cross sectional in nature. Sales
has long been recognized to be a process. What is needed, if we are to really
understand sales performance, are research programs that explicitly recog-
nize that sales performance occurs over time. Work done by the IMP group in
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This area has been well researched, mainly from the perspective of expec-
tancy theory. A number of areas such as role conflict and role ambiguity and
the problems with those issues (e.g., stress and propensity to leave) have been
explored in considerable detail. However, as with other sales research, this
area also suffers from a lack of a process perspective. A classic work by Cron
(1984) on the sales career life cycle and work on stress and burnout by Sager
(1994), Singh, Goolsby and Rhoads (1994), and Verbeke (1997) provide
insight into the time and process aspects of the phenomenon.
Compensation is still an issue for most companies--how much to pay
salespeople, what is too little, what is too much, and how much does one have
to pay to attract the kinds of people who will do the job well. There is a
tremendous literature in management and psychology that deals with these
issues in various contexts, but the anecdotal literature from the trade press
still indicates that there are more questions than answers. Only limited re-
search has been done on how we reward teams and when is it appropriate, but
as sales becomes more complex, more team selling is bound to evolve,
making this a very relevant question.
This area has produced a wide variety of research topics and perspectives.
Areas that have had some research include performance evaluation, leader-
David A. Reid and Richard E. Plank 135
ship issues, supervisory issues, and sales force deployment. Most of these
areas, and in fact all that has been discussed previously, are highly interre-
lated.
The movement toward more behavioral performance evaluation also sug-
gests more of a process orientation. This notion of behavioral performance
evaluation versus just outcome evaluation offers some very specific payoffs
for managers that they cannot get from output evaluations. If a salesperson
does not make quota that is all the information a manager would receive. But,
if a manager can tie behavioral evaluation to quota or other output perfor-
mance measures, then the knowledge of those linkages can be used in im-
proving specific behavioral performance and subsequently improved output
performance.
The work by Cravens and colleagues on sales force deployment is exem-
plary in terms of both collaboration among many people and programmatic
research. Their recent work using an Australian sample is also a good exam-
ple of an integrative view of sales management practices. Leadership repre-
sents an area that has not had very much research activity, and is ripe, not
only for more empirical work, but for greater integration as a focal point in
the sales management process.
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As noted previously, almost nothing has been done on hiring and firing.
There is, however, a long history of research in the personnel literature on
hiring. Relating to sales and behaviors, there is a very specific literature in the
personnel and psychology areas that deals with the linking of behavioral
skills back into the hiring process. Interested researchers can start with Rol-
lins (1989), Rollins and Fruge (1992), Esque and Gilbert (1995) and Guinn
(1998). Finally, it should be noted that sales management is a process which
is broad in conception. It includes not only outside salespeople, which are
almost always the focal point of most research, but inside sales technical
people, telemarketers, and other people within the firm who support the sales
process. Research needs to recognize this complexity and respond to it. This
suggests that the field critically evaluate the concepts of performance and
effectiveness and redefine them to recognize the strategic and tactical aspects
of sales performance, the time and process element, and the fact that many
people other than salespeople impact the overall sales success.
Limitations
Finally, we are well aware that every research project has its limitations
and ours is no exception. We are certain that some readers will point out that
there are articles or areas that they consider extremely important that we did
not discuss or did not discuss in sufficient detail. However, with a project of
this magnitude and a field as broad as business marketing, this is something
that is unavoidable. And while we attempted to include as comprehensive a
136 JOURNAL OF BUSINESS-TO-BUSINESS MARKETING
set of publications as possible, there are some who will no doubt feel that this
journal or that proceeding should have been included. As with any major
undertaking, hard decisions had to be made in order to keep the project
manageable while at the same time providing the needed depth and breadth
of coverage. We feel that the tradeoffs we have made were appropriate.
Obviously there are many other topics that are both important and ap-
propriate. We hope that our review will spur continued efforts at improving
our understanding of business markets. We are confident that the next 20
years will yield answers to most of the questions we have posed.
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