Business‐to‐Business Marketing: Strategies and Implementation

Citation

Rich, M.K. (2003), "Business‐to‐Business Marketing: Strategies and Implementation", Journal of Business & Industrial Marketing, Vol. 18 No. 3, pp. 289-291. https://doi.org/10.1108/jbim.2003.18.3.289.1

Overview

This book is an adaptation of a successful French text, which is now into its second edition. The text is designed specifically for those students taking a business‐to‐business marketing (B2B) or industrial marketing course at the undergraduate or graduate level. It is designed to give the reader a thorough knowledge of how B2B markets operate. It would be ideally suited for the third or fourth year undergraduate student majoring in marketing who has previously taken a foundation course in marketing that focused on the usual 4Ps and emphasized the consumer approach to the subject. The text would also complement the understanding of the MBA student lacking in previous exposure to the specialized nature of the B2B marketplace. The practicing manager who is confronted with having to understand the unique qualities of the B2B market and has had little previous exposure outside of the usual consumer orientation will find this work useful and very specific to his or her needs.

Some unique characteristics of the book worth noting are the authors’ linkage of examples throughout the book. Several examples keep appearing as specific topics are covered, permitting the reader to realize the integrative nature of a given organization and how specific B2B characteristics are dealt with by an organization. Another point that differentiates the authors’ approach is their integration of the subject into other business aspects, avoiding the appearance that often plagues texts of this type – the false concept that the subject is a stand‐alone issue in the business world. Too often books on consumer marketing, services marketing and B2B marketing appear as if they can all be neatly compartmentalized and understood separately. Since this is not the case, especially with B2B marketing, the authors have broken down the many aspects and organizations involved in this process to illustrate that the marketing of a nuclear power plant is not the same as marketing pumps or paints. Some products or services might approach the same characteristics as consumer marketing but others have no similarity. This text recognizes the high degree of variance between these products and is organized in a manner to address these differences. As an example, exchanges between firms imply both goods and services. Selling goods does include a lot of services that need to be rendered by the supplier to the buyer. The authors’ intention is not to deal with pure services marketing but to stress the importance of service in all B2B environments. That said, the authors still devote one chapter entirely to pure services marketing.

The major differentiation of this text is the European perspective it offers. It is an academically rigorous text, with strong practical application that has been tried in a variety of business settings. It stresses the diversity of the B2B arena and provides usable frameworks for dealing with this diversity. The authors have concluded that much of the theoretical basis of B2B marketing is largely the result of the work of researchers grouped into an informal body called the International Marketing and Purchasing Group. It is this group that has influenced much of what this work contains.

About the authors

Daniel Michel is a retired Professor of Marketing at EMLyon in France while Peter Naudé is Professor of Marketing at the School of Management at the University of Bath in England. More from the practitioner side, Robert Salle is Director of Research at EMLyon in France and Jean‐Paul Valla is Development Manager at ALGOE in Lyon as well as being a Director of Research at EMLyon.

Content

At the onset, the authors have neatly diagrammed the structure of the book to facilitate understanding their approach to the subject. Reference to this exhibit during the course of reading will assist in understanding its content. Chapter 1 sets the link between increasing globalization and the need for companies to focus on managing productivity. The chapter also serves as an introduction to the content of the remainder of the text. Chapter 2, while still part of their broad introduction to the subject, examines B2B marketing in more detail, introducing the important notion of relationships and the interaction model to look at how these might vary across different B2B environments. The point is made that not only are there different kinds of B2B marketing environments, but also they might have to co‐exist in the same firm. They illustrate that a firm might be used to offering a “normal” product to the marketplace suddenly finding itself under pressure to launch an offering based upon technological innovation, services or major projects. Examples of how to deal with this diversity are to be found throughout this book.

The next four chapters of Part I are then concerned with examining the strategic foundations that underpin B2B marketing. Chapter 3 deals with purchasing and the authors propose that purchasing is the flip side of marketing and the different objectives of both parties need to be understood. Chapter 4 focuses on marketing information systems and B2B marketing research requirements. This is followed by Chapter 5 that looks at how a supplier’s marketing strategy will need to vary dependent upon both their own internal resources and the needs of the external marketplace. The role of segmentation in a B2B setting is addressed in Chapter 6 along with the Markstrat Model, which lies at the heart of the authors’ approach to dealing with how to link segmentation, resources, offers, and customer management.

The next six chapters (Part II) are more concerned with the implementation of strategy. Chapter 7 examines the vital issues surrounding the design and management of the offer, whether this is based on a product, service, or combination of the two. Having designed the offer, Chapter 8 examines ways to deliver it to the marketplace or the traditional role of distribution, and the obvious question of whether to deliver your message via your own sales force, or to make use of manufacturers’ reps or distributors. Issues surrounding communications and advertising are examined in Chapter 9 while Chapter 10 analyzes the role of technological innovation in influencing the evolvement of products. Chapter 11 focuses on the marketing of pure services in the B2B environment while Chapter 12 deals with the marketing of major projects that are customized for each customer.

The balance of the book focuses on B2B marketing strategies with all of its related issues with the Appendix devoted to the WWW and e‐commerce. It is not clear why this material is included in an Appendix unless the related time frame for the book’s writing preceded the impact of these two major issues in today’s B2B scene.

The book is amply sprinkled with tables and figures to clarify and position various discussions. Each chapter furnishes the reader with additional sources of information for pursuit of greater insights on the specific subject at hand. Each chapter covers 20 to 30 pages of rather rigorous material. The depth of content is here and a focused reader will gain much from the effort. This text is a perfect answer for those outside of the United States seeking a more relevant text for use in Europe with appropriate examples and discussion. For those in the United States willing to break with historical provincialism that has existed with many of the texts in this field, this one is worth a second look.