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V. Prasanna Bhat

Business-to-Business Marketing A Strategic Approach By Michael H Morris et al Publishers: Sage, Thousand Oaks Price $74.95

While the authors state that B2B, in the context of this book is classical industrial marketing, (like proverbial old wine in new bottle!); in reality the authors have done much more and one must add a systematic and yet comprehensive work of modern B2B strategies. This form of marketing happens when the customer is a business or organisation. This type of marketing is also known as organisational marketing. These markets are diverse, sizeable (bigger in a number of ways than consumer markets), and are experiencing dynamic growth.

For many years industrial marketing took a back seat to consumer marketing. This has changed in the past two-and-a-half decades, with some universities offering courses in the discipline. The appearance of a number of academic journals, and conferences held annually around the world, all devoted to the challenges of the B2B marketing, in addition to a growing body of quality research on industrial selling and buying, the knowledge base of the discipline is indeed to expanding. New tools continue to appear both for understanding these markets and for better managing.

While technology results in a much faster pace of new product and service development, product life cycles get shorter. Technology also affects the manner in which industrial firms make products, their approach to customer logistics, and the levels of support and service they provide customers. It makes it possible for buyer and seller to operate in real time, conducting much of their business through electronic networks.

Entrepreneurial revolutions have resulted in downsizing, reengineering, and reinventing themselves in attempts to remain competitive. The essence of sustainable competitive advantage today lies in adaptability, flexibility, speed, aggressiveness, and innovativeness. It is the entrepreneurial firm that is today's winner; the marketing function is learning to play a leading role in the entrepreneurial efforts of companies.

Essentially, it is marketing that discovers the new market segments, identifies the untapped needs, finds new applications for existing products, and introduces innovativeness/processes for selling, distribution, and customer service.

Also, there is a revolution within marketing itself, as it questions traditional assumptions and opts for new frameworks, theories, models, and concepts. Marketing also has to move away from the mass market to transaction. Now, marketing is about relationships, partnerships, and alliances. One-to-one approaches, niche marketing programmes that are customised to individual needs, have replaced the old `one size fits all' way of thinking. B2B marketing has long recognised that success in the marketplace hinges on the ability to build long-term relationships one account at a time.

The authors propose three objectives to the book: to provide an introduction to the distinctive nature of the job of the marketer when the customer is a business or organisation, to provide an appreciation for the growing and changing role of marketing within industrial companies, and to provide insights into ways in which a number of emerging principles, concepts, and techniques can be used successfully by the industrial marketer.

The presentation is structured to be consistent with the logic of strategic thinking and acting. The first six chapters focus on developing an understanding of the industrial marketplace, whereas the next six chapters look at as how to translate that understanding into creative and impact-full marketing programs, closing with a discussion of how to track and evaluate the success of these programmes.

Inclusion of a comprehensive chapter on how businesses actually make buying decisions, with a number of tools for deciphering key buying influences and matching the selling process to the buying process, is a very useful contribution in this book.

There is a practical assessment of the fundamental changes taking place in the marketing function, including the move towards one-to-one marketing and the concept of customer equity and coverage, and of latest developments such as to how to build and manage relationships with business customers etc. in this volume.

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