Projects

Transformational capabilities in the educational portfolio & education excellence

The Cluster delivers innovative and research-based teaching in business-to-business marketing and sales. Our high-quality teaching is based on different delivery methods, starting from class-based teaching, blended teaching to fully online courses. Our teaching evaluations are consistently high. Further, members involve businesses in teaching efforts as well by inviting guest speakers and playing business games. Teaching platforms are consciously used to engage international colleagues and practitioners in our teaching.

Cluster members teach in different programs at different levels within CBS. For example, the cluster has been offering a Ph.D. course “Advances in B2B Marketing Research”, together with colleagues (A. de Jong, T. Ritter, M.K. de Ruyter, M. van der Borgh, J. Kadic-Maglajlic S., and T. Schäfers), which has been successfully run last year with good evaluations. Participants were Ph.D. students from various highly reputed academic institutions all over Europe.

Further, the business-to-business marketing perspective is now included in different courses and programs on undergraduate and master’s level. Example courses taught by researchers affiliated with the research cluster are:

• B2B Marketing
• Business Intelligence and Customer Insights
• Business Models for Digital Platform Ecosystems
• Creating Innovation & Customer Value
• Managing the Customer Journey in a Marketing Perspective
• Sales Management
• Sales Implementation

Michel van der Borgh is the coordinator of our flagship M.Sc. in Sales Management, where cluster members offer a range of courses. The Sales Management (SAM) program has a strong focus on the impact of digitalization on customer and commercial development marketing and sales functions. Students learn how to utilize the new opportunities that come with the implementation of digital strategies and multiple platforms for increased reach and efficiency, as well as customer value and interaction. The program relies on the combined involvement of top scholars, businesses, and students. By working on real-life cases, students learn how to apply state-of-the art insights from academic research. This program has now become a very uniquely positioned and one of the few academic programs in European that offer Sales Management from a B-to-B perspective.

Exploration of big challenges/wicked problems

Members are involved in several academic articles, editorials, and research funding projects that address major challenges such as sustainability in business-to-business selling, how effectively cope with Covid-19 in business-to-business marketing, selling and, solution practice, and how to infuse principles of circular economics in business-to-business marketing practice. These initiatives are explored by individual members, or teams of members joining international research groups.

Engagement in interdisciplinary and collaborative projects

Members collaborate internationally. For example, several members are editors or members of the editorial board at leading international journals, such as Industrial Marketing Management, Journal of Service Research, and Journal of Personal Selling and Sales Management. These editorial activities enable cluster members to develop a broader and reflective view on business-to-business as field of research and how to further develop the field. In addition, cluster members also collaborate with scholars from different fields, like service research, innovation research, circular economics. These cross-disciplinary collaborations help infuse the business-to-business research field with new perspectives and novel insights.

Engagement in the wider academic community

The researchers affiliated with the BMRC are active members of the global academic community of business-to-business marketing researchers. As such, we have been involved twice in hosting the Industrial Marketing Management Summit, an interactive format enabling academia to develop and discuss current developments in industrial and business-to-business marketing, and the IMP Conference. Moreover, we take on important editorial roles at leading international journals, such as being the Co-Editor in Chief at Industrial Marketing Management, the Associate Editor at Industrial Marketing Management and European Journal of Marketing, and being members of the editorial boards of the Journal of Service Research, the Journal of Personal Selling & Sales Management, Industrial Marketing Management, the Journal of Business-to-Business Marketing, the Journal of Business and Industrial Marketing, and European Business Review. Additionally, we are frequently involved in co-chairing tracks on business-to-business marketing at leading international conferences, such as the American Marketing Association Academic Conference or the Academy of Marketing Science Annual Conference.

Industrial Marketing Management is the leading outlet for theoretical, empirical, and case-based research geared to the needs of marketing scholars and practitioners researching and working in industrial and business-to-business markets. As a signature feature, Industrial Marketing Management strives for a balance of theory and practical applications in all its articles. The journal’s global reach is evidenced by the fact that international scholars and practitioners from North America, Europe, Australia/New Zealand, Asia, and other regions of the globe share their latest findings for improving effectiveness and efficiency of industrial markets. This comprehensive approach has helped to keep readers abreast of the timeliest research and practice necessary for better marketing decisions and strategy in global industrial and business-to-business markets. The journal is co-edited by Adam Lindgreen and Tony Di Benedetto (Fox School of Business at Temple University). In addition, from 2020 Selma Kadic-Maglajlic, Michel van der Borgh, and Tobias Schäfers act as Associate co-editors for Industrial Marketing Management.

In 2018, together with the journal’s publisher, the co-editors-in-chiefs launched the Industrial Marketing Management Summit. The aim of the summit is to offer a platform for debating (as opposed to writing and reading) current theory and practice challenges and their solutions. We wished to establish an interactive format enabling academia to develop and discuss thought leadership thereby developing solutions for society. The summits thus provide a forum for rigorous and thought-provoking papers that examine current and emerging topics in industrial and business-to-business marketing. This includes literature reviews, conceptual studies, methodological entries, or empirical studies. The Industrial Marketing Management Summit has been hosted by Copenhagen Business School for the first two years (2018 and 2019, and will again in 2021).