The pursuit of growth is a key endeavor of all types of firms, but it is particularly important for SMEs. From a managerial perspective, growing SMEs face a wide range of challenges; this study proposes a broad framework that emphasizes not only the various types of managerial challenges, but also the importance of taking a balanced, broad approach to facing them. In a qualitative study of 44 Swedish SMEs, the researchers identify, map, and aggregate distinct challenges to SME growth, proposing three overarching themes - business model, leadership, and people. Multiple lower-level categories and individual challenges make up each of these themes suggesting that firms that seek to excel in growth should be aware of and manage all three themes in a balanced manner. This research provides insights into each theme and potential consequences for SMEs; it also offers an overarching, integrative perspective on SME growth challenges opening future research avenues.

This paper explores how B2B firms can manage the value creation process at multi-actor touchpoints in the customer journey. We argue that B2B firms can benefit from opening up their touchpoints to multi-actor interactions between the customer, firm, partners and other customers, answering recent calls for broadening the scope of customer journeys to also include such multi-actor touchpoints. In our research we perceive the value creating process as the actors, activities and resources involved in the emergence of value through the customer journey. An ecosystem perspective is adopted to increase understanding of how firms can enhance the value creating process through the B2B customer journey. By empirically examining an industrial ecosystem, our tentative findings point towards the importance of balancing the number of touchpoints as well as designing touchpoints depending on the customer’s needs and requirements to manage the value creation process. 

Business Marketing delivers comprehensive coverage of the theory and practice needed to understand today’s fast-paced B2B markets and how to act on them. Being able to navigate on contemporary markets and include marketing in firm strategy is becoming a key capability for successful firms. The book reflects the latest trends and issues and incorporates recent research insights on how to manage value creation and build competitive advantage. Key concepts, such as value propositions and customer relationships, are discussed and explored as well as illustrated through a rich set of examples from various industries. Business Marketing provides an excellent guide to B2B marketing for students and practitioners alike.

Extant literature on dynamic capabilities hints at the possibility of a wider scope than merely the firm, beyond the individual firm boundary, and thus the existence of interorganizational dynamic capabilities (IDCs). Although IDCs have been acknowledged as a source for sustainable competitive advantage, research on these capabilities remains fragmented and unstructured. Therefore, the purpose of this article is to develop a conceptualization of interorganizational dynamic capabilities. Based on a systematic literature review, a framework with four types of IDCs distinguished by their different locus of control and beneficiary is presented. For each type, the overarching capability themes of orchestration of network resources and governing of network members are described. The article provides a classification of IDCs that avoids comparing ?apples and oranges.? It also elaborates on dynamic capabilities that exist beyond the control of a single firm, and their relationship to other firm-based types of IDCs.

This study explores the potential existence of reoccurring patterns in market-shaping processes by employing a qualitative meta-analysis to analyze 79 case studies on market-shaping. Through the evidence-based synthesis of qualitative data, we extract 20 generalized market-shaping activities that inform and form the foundation of a three-phased market-shaping process. This conceptual framework divides the market-shaping process into the phases of infusion, formation and retention. By applying our conceptual framework to the qualitative dataset, we explore the presence of market-shaping phases and provide further insights into the interdependences and dynamics between multiple, simultaneously occurring, market-shaping processes. By providing a structured market-shaping process, we attempt to reduce the overall complexity of the market-shaping phenomenon and facilitate the operationalization of the phenomenon for further market-shaping research. Additionally, our conceptualization provides practitioners with a framework to analyze the market-shaping efforts of other market actors and support the design of their own market-shaping strategies.

We identify four market-shaping strategies and their related activities that enable a focal market actor to work towards specific market outcomes. The conceptual framework provides firms with a tool for choosing specific market-shaping strategies depending on their market-shaping intention (offensive/defensive) and perception of a market's stability (stable/unstable). Accordingly, and in line with market-shaping literature, the four market-shaping strategies enable a firm to widen, reduce, maintain, or disrupt a market. Whereas previous market-strategy conceptualizations emphasized firm-level outcomes, the four identified market-shaping strategies focus on market outcomes and encompass a more comprehensive understanding of the impact of a firm's strategic actions on a market. Thereby, this study offers new perspectives on the implementation of market strategies in the context of markets as complex adaptive systems. By exemplifying the four market-shaping strategies using four industry cases, we illustrate how market-shaping strategies can appear in practice and demonstrate how firms can strategically leverage and steer market processes to their advantage.

Proactivity is an important driver of firm performance and for the creation of customer value on business-to-business markets. It is however not entirely clear what it is proactive firms actually do to achieve success. By investigating proactive firms' market strategies, i.e. the sets of activities they perform in order to create superior customer value, a holistic overview of the activities involved in proactive market strategies is provided. Through a case study of five proactive firms, proactive activities are identified. Using three strategic orientations—customer, competition, and innovation orientation—unique proactivity profiles are created, reflecting the patterns in the identified proactive activities. Through these profiles, three overarching proactive market strategies are forwarded: market shaping, customer engagement, and innovation leadership. These are proposed to act as generic proactive market strategies, representing coordinated proactive activities driven by multiple strategic orientations and aimed at creating customer value. These generic strategies help us understand of the role of proactivity in crafting high-performing market strategies by representing different routes to success.

Research into market orientation and market shaping shows the potential of proactive firm behavior in achieving superior firm performance. However, these rely on an implicit definition of proactivity, making it difficult to understand the exact role of proactivity in strengthening performance. This study will investigate the role of proactivity in enabling superior firm performance through firms’ market strategies, i.e. understanding how proactive market strategies create success. First, proactivity is delineated into three proactive characteristics: being future-oriented, taking the initiative, and creating change, thus providing a more nuanced view. By using fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis, this study then will investigate the configurations of different forms of proactivity and market strategies that consistently lead to high performance. Thus, the study will provide a starting point for future studies into the impact of proactivity in strategic marketing.

Purpose

This paper aims to investigate factors that affect the use of value-based selling and the subsequent influences on salespeople’s sales performance.

Design/methodology/approach

Industrial salespeople from five steel manufacturers were surveyed. Scales measure three components of value-based selling: comprehension, crafting and confirmation. Partial least squares path analysis tested the conceptual model.

Findings

Salespeople’s learning orientation has the greatest impact on the use of value-based selling. Managerial support exerts a positive effect on crafting. Salespeople’s experience has a positive impact on comprehension and confirmation. The implementation of value-based selling has a positive effect on sales performance.

Research limitations/implications

The research is cross-sectional, with a small sample size (n = 60). The data were collected from a single source (i.e. salespeople).

Practical implications

The results suggest that value-based selling is a multi-component sales process that requires balancing managerial actions among individual and organizational factors.

Originality/value

This paper presents a broad evaluation of measures and assessments of value-based selling in business-to-business sales settings. The findings provide new elaborations on the theoretical and practical implications of value-based selling and reveal which individual and organizational factors affect the usage of value-based selling.