About

Mission

Members of the Business-to-Business Marketing Research Cluster (BMRC) are passionately focused on challenging the status-quo through our dedicated business-to-business marketing research excellence, which is based on interdisciplinary collaborations and long-term partnerships. Our team comprises researchers who investigate different aspects of marketing, marketing management, and marketing strategy between organizations.

Vision

The vision of the BMRC l is to be the undisputed leader in this domain in Scandinavia and one of the leading research clusters on a global level, held in high esteem in terms of research, teaching, and dissemination. Following the Department of Marketing’s mission, our goal is to produce marketing research that impacts society via the dissemination of knowledge which helps national and global organizations to become more competitive.

Our values

We have set our values to assist us in achieving our Cluster’s mission and visions. These values are essence of our Cluster’s identity and summarizes the purpose of our existence:

• Excellence in research and teaching.
• Diversity.
• Partnership.
• Interdisciplinarity.
• Relevance.

Focal research areas

The BRMC is the central hub for various areas of research interest that relates to business-to-business marketing, which is the marketing of products or services to other businesses and organizations. Currently, the Cluster’s areas of research interest are:

• Commercial capabilities.
• Organizational buying behavior.
• Sales management and value-based selling.
• Managing frontline employees and frontline teams.
• Customer relationship management.
• Servitization and customer solutions.
• The interplay between marketing and purchasing, and marketing innovative technologies.

Each of these areas is represented by one or multiple members of the Cluster and linked to a network of internal scholars from the Department/CBS and/or external researchers who work on relevant research in the respective area. Some of these research areas are connected to each other as well as to other research clusters in the Department.

Members affiliated with the cluster conduct conceptual work, for example, on the existence of multi-dexterity in customer relationship management, on new product selling, or on interactions between purchasing and marketing, as well as empirical investigations. In empirical research projects, a wide range of methodological approaches are employed, ranging from case studies, to qualitative methods, to experiments, to quantitative analytical methods.

Fundamental business knowledge & research excellence

Members constantly aim to attract funding and to strengthen relationships with commercial partners to increase business knowledge. Members publish exceptionally well and aim to hire more colleagues to achieve a critical mass and become a Center of Excellence.

Research that is both rigorous and relevant represents the foundation of the BMRC. Regarding research, our strategic focus areas are:

• Publishing in high-quality international academic journals.
• Promotion of the Cluster through visible participation at top international research conferences.
• Acquisition of research funding.

To fulfill these goals, the researchers affiliated with the cluster started variety of research projects. Examples of current research projects:

• Corporate social responsibility and sustainability in business-to-business marketing management.
• Selling access-based services: What are the determinants of successfully selling services that replace asset ownership?
• Examining aspects of planning, undertaking, and publishing research in business-to-business marketing management, reflections that should help prospective researchers eventually to see their findings published in top business-to-business marketing management journals.
• Embracing the Complexity of Solutions in Business Markets: Where Do We Come From? Where Do We Go?
• Cluster members have been involved in collaborative projects with researchers from STEM disciplines

Internal and international collaboration

We are proud of the diversity that we cherish at BMRC. Members come from diverse backgrounds in terms of research topics within business-to-business marketing, methodology, career stage, etc. Further, there is a broad variety in terms of the international background of the members, who have held positions in countries such as the UK, the Netherlands, Germany, Bosnia and Herzegovina, France, and Finland. In addition, the members perform very well research wise. They are highly productive on AJG 3 publications in the business-to-business marketing field and also generate a sizeable number of AJG 4/4* publications. In addition, members are actively involved (as editor, co-editor, or editorial board member) in Industrial Marketing Management, which is the leading academic journal in business-to-business marketing. This makes the cluster highly visible at international level and it makes it easy to attract visiting scholars to come to CBS, from young talents to distinguished scholars in the field.

Internal collaboration among members and a continuous engagement with the wider national and international academic and business community are central to our aim to be the undisputed leader in business-to-business marketing domain in Scandinavia and one of the leading research clusters on a global level. Therefore, the cluster collaborates with various business-to-business marketing researchers from Denmark and abroad. Additionally, several transdisciplinary research collaborations exist with colleagues from STEM disciplines.