بازاریابی کسب و کار: دیدگاه های نگرش بازارها به عنوان شبکه ها

To us as academics the ideas of the Markets-as-Networks tradition have always seemed to be attractive and engaging. These frameworks have also yielded a positive response from our post-experience students in particular. Invariably their response is “… this is exactly how it happens in my business … ” However, some practitioners view the Markets-as-Networks literature as difficult and inaccessible. In academic circles many beyond the tradition have little knowledge of the central ideas or their wider applications. This paper goes some small way to rectifying this problem, by briefly reviewing the theoretical principles of the Markets-as-Networks approach and their implications for marketing practitioners.

To us the ideas of the Markets-as-Networks tradition have always seemed attractive and engaging. We feel that the ideas within the tradition overcome many of the limitations of existing frameworks as well as offering an original and more “realistic” way of understanding business markets. This is particularly achieved through the network perspective with its emphasis on a contextual understanding of economic exchange. These frameworks have also yielded a positive response from our post-experience students. Invariably their response is “ … this is exactly how it happens in my business … ” However, some of these practitioners view the Markets-as-Networks literature as difficult and inaccessible. The problem of communicating the ideas of the Markets-as-Networks approach to practitioners has become an important topic for some within the Markets-as-Networks research community. A previous special issue of Industrial Marketing Management has addressed the problem [1], as have recent edited books from group members 2 and 3. This special issue makes a further contribution to this by presenting unique and original practical insights on problems of contemporary concern to business marketing managers. The papers contained in this special issue are drawn from those presented at the 15th annual Industrial Marketing and Purchasing (IMP) conference, hosted by the Department of Marketing at the Michael Smurfit Graduate School of Business, Dublin, Ireland in September 1999. More than 300 delegates presented 218 papers dealing with the problems of business marketing from a relational and network perspective. The 16th IMP conference is to be hosted at the University of Bath in early September 2000. The web-site for conference details is: View the MathML sourcew.bath.ac.uk/Departments/Management/Marketing/IMP%20CONF.htm The Michael Smurfit Graduate School of Business, at University College Dublin is Ireland's largest business school. In 1964, it was the first business school in Europe to offer an MBA program. With more than 100 full-time faculty members and with student numbers restricted to 1,000, it enjoys a favorable staff–student ratio allowing it to maintain a high quality of teaching and research. All of the papers contained in this special issue were presented at the IMP conference. They were selected, in line with Industrial Marketing Management principles, for the particular emphasis they placed on managerial issues. This is in addition to their undoubted quality that has been ensured through a double-blind review process. This paper is essentially divided into two sections, by way of introduction to the Markets-as-Networks, IMP or Industrial Networks approach. First, the paper reviews the key theoretical ideas of the field and identifies the main managerial challenges of marketing in a network environment. The second part of the paper develops the aspect of managerial applications by introducing the papers contained in the special issue as a whole.

Our final set of papers broadly deal with an emerging issue in business marketing, actor satisfaction. The first paper by Naudé and Buttle deals with the issue of relationship quality. Although the role of relationship management has become recognized within business circles, much of the literature remains only prescriptive, that is without specific guidelines or insight on the nature of a “good” relationship. The authors go some way toward rectifying this problem. Drawing from existing efforts they identify the main constructs through which managers assess relational quality and value such as trust, needs fulfillment and profit. Using a variety of statistical tests the authors conclude that relational quality is understood as different combinations of these variables by managers in different contextual circumstances. Eriksson and Lofmarck Vagnult examine the issue of customer retention in professional services. While many approaches to retention will focus on particular attributes as explanations, the authors take a network informed perspective and examine the role that relationship substance has on the level of retention. Using LISREL, they consider the impact of factors such as organizational change and relationship satisfaction. They conclude that relationship substance can be used as an accurate measure and predictor of customer retention. In the final paper, Tikkanen et al., examine the issues of customer satisfaction in the Finnish software industry. They suggest the limitation of current approaches to satisfaction as looking at satisfaction only at the “inner context” level, focusing on factors such the rating of product and service offerings. Such a view, they argue, does not allow for the complexity of business markets as proposed by the Markets-as-Networks perspective. They propose instead a network inspired model of satisfaction which takes into account the greater complexity of business markets and the difficulties of understanding it in such markets. Using a case study of a Finnish Information Technology (IT) company they describe and highlight the process of customer satisfaction and dissatisfaction. The outcome is a deeper understanding of the nature and impact of satisfaction in industrial markets.