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The United Nations' 17 Sustainable Development Goals provide business to business marketing (B2B) scholars with a useful framework to guide research with a societal impact that addresses real-world challenges and is relevant to stakeholders outside academia. Although sustainability research within B2B marketing scholarship has increased in recent years, the B2B literature relating to the Sustainable Development Goals remains fragmented and underexposed. To address this important oversight, a systematic literature review of the B2B marketing literature (n = 58) is undertaken which demonstrates if and how B2B scholarship is currently engaging with the Sustainable Development Goals. The findings and analyses highlight that although the B2B scholarship has varying levels of engagement with some of the goals, there is vast opportunity for B2B Marketing scholars to engage more proactively and strategically with the Sustainable Development Goals. Building on the call for courageous research and employing the ‘Observe, bridge and challenge” model (Lindgreen et al., 2021), we develop broad research approaches as well as specific research questions to catalyse scholarship at the interface of B2B Marketing and the Sustainable Development Goals.

There is a gap of knowledge between practitioners about the off-site construction. For this reason, the Manni Group case study presented in this article highlights the positive role of dissemination as business value proposition support in the context of off-site construction industry. The Manni Group involved opinion leaders, professionals, universities and industrial partners in a network of dissemination that, going beyond the concept of advertising, it generated a multiple effect of value creation between the direct and indirect involved stakeholders. Dissemination emerges as a model of action that creates impacts on cultural change. It is scalable and applicable in many areas where actors have the right competences to manage the dissemination. Wherever there is a knowledge gap or friction towards new techniques and methodologies, the model is able to create value for companies and stakeholders involved in the emerging network.

O projeto visa propor um plano de marketing com ênfase no plano de comunicação digital para a Cleverti, para o ano 2023, que compreende um programa para consolidação do mercado já conquistado em anos anteriores e melhorar o atendimento prestado a clientes através da utilização de um conjunto de programas desenvolvidos pela própria empresa, sob a designação genérica de Cleverti/Care. Os principais objetivos do projeto consistem em incrementar uma maior visibilidade junto dos potenciais clientes e impulsionar as suas vendas, permitindo à empresa reforçar o seu posicionamento enquanto empresa tecnológica de referência em Portugal e impulsionadora da transformação digital em diversos setores de atividade. Foi efetuada uma pesquisa da literatura sobre os temas abordados e identificada uma metodologia que trata da recolha, ordenamento, análise e combinação de dados relacionados. Levando em linha de conta a análise situacional e tendo em consideração o trabalho desenvolvido pela empresa em anos anteriores e os objetivos fixados para 2023 foi delineada uma estratégia de marketing e respetivo plano operacional para 2023 que incluiu a variável comunicação do marketing-mix. The project aims to propose a marketing plan with emphasis on the communication plan that foresees the means of digital communication for Cleverti, for the year 2023, which includes a program to consolidate the market already conquered in previous years and improve the service provided to its customers, through the use of Cleverti/Care programs developed by the company itself. The main objectives of the project are to increase greater visibility among potential customers and boost their sales, allowing the company to strengthen its positioning as a leading technological company in Portugal and driving digital transformation in various sectors of activity. A literature search was carried out on the topics covered and a methodology was identified that deals with the collection, ordering, analysis and combination of related data. Taking into account the situational analysis and, taking into account the work developed by the company in previous years and the objectives set for 2023, a marketing strategy and respective operational plan for 2023 was outlined, which included the marketing-mix communication variable.

PurposeBig data analytics (BDA) is becoming a strategic tool to harness data to achieve business efficiencies. While business-to-customer organizations have adopted BDA, its adoption in business-to-business (B2B) has been slow, raising concerns about the lack of understanding of the need to adopt BDA. Little knowledge exists on the subject and the purpose of this study is to examine BDA adoption needs among B2B organizations.Design/methodology/approachA systematic literature review (SLR) following the six-step SLR guidelines of Templier and Paré (2015) involved 1,051 articles, which were content analyzed.FindingsThe authors offer two-pronged findings. First, on the basis of the SLR, the authors develop a new four-category classification scheme of needs to adopt BDA and present a consolidated review of the current knowledge base along with these categories (i.e. innovation, operational efficiency, customer satisfaction and digital transformation). Second, underpinned by the theory of organizational motivation and literature evidence, the authors develop propositions and a corresponding model of BDA adoption needs. The authors show that BDA adoption among B2B organizations is driven by the need to augment customer lifetime value, champion the change, improve managerial decision cycle-time, tap into social media benefits and align with market transformation.Research limitations/implicationsThe results facilitate theory development as the study creates a new classification scheme of needs and a model of needs to adopt BDA in large B2B organizations.Practical implicationsThe findings will serve as a guideline framework for managers to examine their BDA adoption needs and strategize its adoption.Originality/valueThe study develops a new four-category classification scheme for understanding B2B organizations’ needs to adopt big data analytics. The study also develops a new model of needs which will serve as a stepping stone for the development of a theory of needs of technology adoption.

Business-to-business (B2B) companies devote significant resources to measure customer satisfaction but lack guidance on critical aspects of implementing satisfaction programs. Accordingly, executives ask: (1) What are the key strategic attributes driving B2B customer satisfaction? (2) Are the strategic attributes satisfaction balancing, satisfaction maintaining, or satisfaction enhancing based on the pattern of asymmetry? (3) Do the sign and magnitude of asymmetry vary across industry and customer subgroups? and (4) Is there a generalizable link between satisfaction and financial performance for B2B firms? Study 1 uses qualitative and secondary research to identify and validate eight strategic attributes pertinent to B2B companies: quality of product/service, pricing, safety, sales process, project management, corporate social responsibility, communication, and ongoing service and support. Study 2 examines industry-subgroup heterogeneity in the nature of asymmetry across industries, then links satisfaction with performance (i.e., sales). Study 3 finds customer-subgroup heterogeneity in the nature of asymmetry within the customer base of a B2B service provider, then links satisfaction with performance (i.e., dollar value of purchase).

Purpose Until today, scholars claim that the phenomenon of “co-creation” of value in an “interacted” economy and in the context of positive actor-to-actor relationships has not been adequately explored. This study aims to first to identify and separate the accessible values of internet of things (IoT)-based business models for business-to-business (B2B) and business-to-government (B2G) customer groups. It quantifies the drivers to successfully implement disruptive business models. Design/methodology/approach Data were gathered from 292 customers in Western Europe. The conceptual framework was tested using partial least square structural equation modeling. Findings Managing disruptions in the digital age is closely related to the fact that the existing trust in buyer-seller relationships is not enough to accept IoT projects. A company’s digitalization capabilities, satisfaction with the existing relationship and trust in the IoT credibility of the manufacturer drives the perceived value of IoT-based business models in B2B settings. Contrastingly, in B2G settings, money is less important. Research limitations/implications Research refers to one business field, the data set is of European origin only. Findings indicate that the drivers to engage in IoT-related projects differ significantly between the customer groups and therefore require different marketing management strategies. Saving time today is more important to B2G buyers than saving money. Practical implications The disparate nature of B2B and B2G buyers indicates that market segmentation and targeted marketing must be considered before joint-venturing in IoT business models. To joint venture supply chain partners co-creating value in the context of IoT-related business models, relationship management should be focused with buyers on the same footing, as active players and co-developers of a personalized experience in digital service projects. Originality/value Diverging from established studies focusing on the relationship within a network of actors, this study defines disruptive business models and identifies its drivers in B2B and B2G relationships. This study proposes joint venturing with B2B and B2G customers to overcome the perceived risk of these IoT-related business models. Including customers in platforms and networks may lead to the co-creation of value in joint IoT projects.

Supplier firms in business-to-business (B2B) contexts increasingly are introducing digital sales channels. This marks a fundamental change for salespeople, in particular, given the extended capabil...

Robust conceptual frameworks are essential to building academic knowledge. Theory development involves high-quality conceptualization that integrates and builds on existing knowledge, possibly using a multi-disciplinary approach. Further, especially in an applied research area such as business-to-business marketing, the emerging theory will have meaningful implications for managerial decision-makers. Insightful conceptual framework development advances theory substantially, not incrementally. Theoretical development can be either purely conceptual or based on empirical data. Nevertheless, there are comparatively few guidelines for the process of conceptual framework development. This editorial discusses pathways to developing conceptual frameworks to support academic research, with emphasis on business-to-business marketing research. As guidelines and conventions are available for data-driven approaches such as grounded theory, we focus on theorizing processes in which existing theory plays a pivotal role.

Business to business marketing research is very healthy, with over 200 papers published in leading journals annually, primarily in Industrial Marketing Management and the Journal of Business & Indu...

Multichannel sales systems in business-to-business markets vary substantially in their designs and thereby either attenuate or aggravate agency conflicts between manufacturers and sales partners. Drawing on multiple agency theory, the authors introduce direct and indirect channel usage as focal design dimensions of multichannel sales systems and investigate each channel’s performance effects using a matched manufacturer–sales partner data set. Whereas direct channel usage predominantly lowers agency conflicts in terms of information asymmetry and sales partner moral hazard, indirect channel usage amplifies moral hazard concerns. How those sales partner effects translate into manufacturer performance outcomes critically depends on governance mechanisms, confirming predictions from governance value analysis: formalization enhances performance outcomes for manufacturers in the case of indirect channel usage but diminishes performance in the case of direct channel usage. The authors observe converse effects for centralization and information exchange: centralization and information exchange enhance outcomes of direct channel usage but diminish outcomes of indirect channel usage. The focal managerial implication is that managers must align the design of their multichannel sales systems with effective governance mechanisms.

This practitioner note offers a defense of the challenger approach to business-to-business marketing in light of the critiques by Rapp et al. (2014) and Inks et al. (2019). This practitioner note a...

Purpose This paper aims to examine how innovation intermediary activities increase relational proximity between start-ups and foreign partners to support start-up internationalization. Design/methodology/approach The paper applies a case study methodology to examine an international network of innovation intermediaries in the resources sector. Interviews were conducted with 59 start-ups, corporate and intermediary managers in four countries, supplemented by secondary data. A two-stage analysis process was performed to first identify activities relating to start-up internationalization and then apply a theoretically derived coding framework based on five proximity dimensions. Findings The case identifies several innovation intermediary activities, which facilitate relationship development between start-ups and partners in new markets. Findings outline how activities increase relational proximity across different dimensions, while also indicating a number of interrelations between dimensions, given the complexity of international business relationships. Originality/value This paper establishes interdisciplinary bridges between business networks, international business and economic geography perspectives. It provides a valuable empirical foundation for relational proximity, demonstrating its application to understanding start-up internationalization and its influence by intermediary-led activities.

Purpose While numerous studies have investigated the returns firms receive for their investments in sponsorship, no study to date has examined the potential for organizational performance to contribute to the continuance of business to business (B2B) relationships. Thus, this study aims to illuminate B2B sponsorship relationships in isolating whether firm decision-makers are like fair-weathered fans, in that they are more likely to stick with successful organizations. Design/methodology/approach An advanced quantitative modeling approach, survival analysis, is applied to a data set of more than 350 sponsorships to isolate the impact of performance on B2B decision-making. Findings Even after controlling for several potentially confounding variables, results indicate that every point per game earned by English football clubs decreases the probability of the sponsoring firm exiting the agreement by 54.4%. Originality/value These findings provide empirical evidence of the impact of the sponsored organization’s performance to influence B2B firm decision-making, a novel finding yet to be confirmed in the sponsorship-linked marketing literature.

This research studies the determinants of price bargaining and its effect on platform competition in a two-sided market.

Purpose This paper aims to argue that engagement with industry in research, while costly in terms of time and effort, can provide benefits in terms of measurable research impact, particularly in the business-to-business (B2B) domain. Design/methodology/approach This study draws joint experiences about how best to connect with an industry organization, how to engage with that organization and how to provide and document impact by transforming some aspect of that organization. Findings The findings of this study provide practical and implementable suggestions on how to engage in impactful B2B research. Originality/value This study discusses the special nature of the B2B domain and why engagement with industry is especially important and beneficial. Though such research may not be appropriate for all academics, this study argues that its high rewards more than compensate for its high costs.

Industrial co-creation projects are often complex and ambiguous, involving high levels of interpretive uncertainty over processes and outcomes. To boost the effectiveness of such projects, firms have increasingly adopted virtual reality (VR) technology and have experienced unique benefits by utilizing digital artifacts—interactive objects in digital environments, such as factory installation layouts or design visualizations. This article provides case evidence demonstrating how VR-enabled digital artifacts support firms to effectively implement tailor-made solutions in robotics and automation projects. The adoption of new digital co-creation practices redefines the traditional customer-provider roles in industrial co-creation, increasing engagement, reducing uncertainty, and improving project outcomes.

The micro, small and medium enterprises are an essential part of the Indian industrial sector. It plays a decisive role in growth and development of Indian economy. The review of literature on various aspects of small and medium enterprises (SMEs) showed that the SMEs, both in the country and other parts of the world, still rely on conventional marketing practices and, more or less, face the same types of challenges. Therefore, the present study is undertaken to examine the marketing strategies of SMEs in western Madhya Pradesh, India, and to suggest some innovative marketing practices for them to prosper. The sample consists of 439 SMEs drawn on a random basis from Indore and Dhar districts of Madhya Pradesh. The primary data are collected through a self-designed instrument with 40 items/statements, developed thorough a review of literature on the topic and personal interviews of managers of SMEs. The data are analysed using statistical tools like factor analysis and chi-square test applied with the help of Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) 20 Software. The study findings reveal that SME managers still rely on age-old practices of marketing. The article recommends some innovative marketing practices for SMEs.

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to examine the social media profiles of logistics service providers, and understand how they use social media for elevating their services and differentiating their brands across industrial partners. Design/methodology/approach A content analysis was conducted on 3,215 social media posts, which were gathered from the official Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and LinkedIn pages of seven logistics service providers operating in Turkey. Findings The results demonstrated that logistics service providers engage with multiple social media channels with different branding motives, and that each company has a unique social media profile. The benchmarking analysis also revealed the branding strategies commonly pursued by the companies, and also indicated the alternative themes that differentiate their brands across their competitors. Research limitations/implications The findings contribute to the literature on the utilization of social media by business-to-business companies, particularly for logistics service providers, and recommend a frame of benchmarks for practitioners in the development of more effective social media branding strategies in services context. Originality/value Studies explaining the social media engagement of business-to-business companies in service sector are lacking, and also, the services branding literature in the context of social media is rather scarce. This study investigates the social media profiles of logistics service providers and explores how they use social media for branding their services.

Purpose: This research identifies a customer perspective that is often ignored, neglected, or undervalued in B-to-B sales – the nature of the product itself. The pivot point is whether the product/...

While the use of data in business-to-business marketing is not a new phenomenon, the digitization and digitalization of business-to-business firms' business models have recently attracted a great deal of attention. With the aim of creating an overview and consolidating this stream of research, the present paper offers a brief historical overview of research on digitization and digitalization in business-to-business markets – concluding that this discussion has a long tradition and, thus, is not a new phenomenon. We develop a definition of digitization capability as a basis for discussing how a firm's digitization capability interacts with its business model to allow for data-enabled growth, i.e. its digitalization, and we highlight promising avenues for future research.

Leading academics in business-to-business marketing were asked to reflect on their careers and to provide advice for doctoral students and early-career academics. Contributors responded to four broad, open-ended questions on this subject: what worked for them in their careers, what did not work, what were the dilemmas they encountered, and what overall advice would they give to junior researchers starting their academic career. This editorial distills the comments and reflections of the contributors into a collective wisdom, organized around the four interview questions, which combine to form a rich set of guidelines for early-career academics.

This report summarizes the entrants in the 2018 ISMS Gary Lilien Marketing Science Practice Prize Competition, designed to identify, encourage, recognize, and reward the application of impactful marketing science to industry and noncommercial settings. These applications aim to showcase innovative and impactful examples of applications demonstrating the best of rigor and relevance that our profession produces. The winner described an application of econometric and experimental techniques at the French-based retailer of body, face, fragrances, and home products, L’Occitane, aimed to optimize budget allocation between online and off-line marketing expenditure across six countries. The other three finalists include a decision support aid to assist members of the United Services Automobile Association (a not-for-profit organization to assist military service personnel select and finance their automobile purchases) choose vehicles that balance their individual tastes and preferences with their financial circumstances, a business-to-business pricing decision support aid for use by the sales force of Hadco Metal Trading to avoid loss of margin by undercharging and loss of business by overcharging, and a methodology to test online advertisements cost-effectively by generating “ghost ads” as a way of minimizing control group costs in a reliable and valid way.

Digital mediation in business-to-business marketing is becoming increasingly important to firms, due to customer needs and evolving technological environments. The extensive research in this area for the past twenty years has created a need to synthesize extant research. This paper examines the literature in the domain, to create a classification scheme for subdomains and to explore future research directions. This study reviews 119 relevant articles published in 29 journals between January 1999 and March 2019, to detail the domain. In addition to providing details on most cited articles and published authors, our analysis classifies the digitally mediated business-to-business marketing literature into four subject clusters—a framework for digitally mediated business-to-business marketing, the digital business-to-business marketplace, value creation through digital marketing, and the use of social media for business-to-business marketing. Four shifts in the literature are described: the emergence of Internet research and business-to-business technology; the evolution of e-commerce; the focus on social media; and the broadening of research. Finally, directions for future research are identified and discussed.

Personal relationships between salespeople and customers are essential for the success of business-to-business relationships, and research has shown that a change of the salesperson can severely harm financial performance. However, such interpersonal relationship disruptions may also have positive effects by encouraging vitalizing reexplorations of the relationship. Using multilevel loyalty theory and relationship life cycle theory, the authors offer a comprehensive conceptualization of potentially countervailing consequences of relationship disruptions. In particular, disruptions may have different effects on resale revenue (from previously sold products) versus new sale revenue (from newly sold products), contingent on both the history and expected future development of the relationship. Therefore, this study examines moderators on the firm-level relationship prior to disruption and salesperson relationship management afterward. Longitudinal data from 2,040 customers of an international business-to-business firm reveal that a disruption can increase overall performance by more than 29%, depending on the firm-level relationship before disruption and the new salesperson’s relationship management. Managers can use these findings proactively to evaluate and manage the risks and opportunities involved in relationship disruptions.

Purpose This study aims to explore if and how business-to-business (B2B) companies can use social media to influence the buying process. Design/methodology/approach The study uses an exploratory approach into the existing literature related to the B2B buying process and its relationship with social media. Findings The study shows that companies in a B2B context can use social media as a means of influencing the stages of the buying process by means of using one or more of the seven functional blocks of social media. Research limitations/implications The findings demonstrate the relation that exists between each stage of the buyer process in a B2B organization and the functional blocks of social media. This study opens the door for further research into the influence of each of these blocks on the buying process stages and the roles involved. Practical implications This study identifies how social media’s blocks influence the different stages and how organizations can use that to their benefit. Originality/value Few studies have investigated the use of social media in a B2B context. However, not many have looked into the influence of social media in the B2B buying process and buying center. This study looks into the relationship between the buying process stages and social media’s functional blocks as related to the different roles of the buying center.

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to further explicate the notion of challenger sale. Design/methodology/approach The method used for this article is a personal interview. Findings The interview provides readers with insights and explanations of the challenger sale method from the authors of the book. Originality/value The interview allows the readers to learn directly from the authors of the methodology.

Purpose This paper aims to reflect on relevance of business-to-business research based on Van de Ven’s (2007) engaged scholarship model. Design/methodology/approach The paper is a reflection of the current state and potential future research avenues. Findings The paper highlights that relevance is important in all four engaged scholarship activities. Pitfalls also occur at all four parts. Research limitations/implications The paper highlights challenges and opportunities in business-to-business marketing research. Originality/value The paper reflects on relevance of research projects.

This research aims to identify, and critically understand, the key opportunities for and barriers against tour operators and their ground handlers sourcing and selling more sustainable tourism products. The study is framed in literature of organisational culture and buyer-seller collaborations both downstream (sustainable supply chain management) and upstream (business to business marketing). Semi-structured interviews help to identify the tour operators’ barriers, opportunities and key decision making criteria. The findings suggest that a supportive organisational culture is a prerequisite to success for companies that wish to scale up the volume of sustainable products they source and sell. Sustainability only sells when it contributes to an organisation’s ability to meet its requirement of quality of service, especially in relation to suitability of the products to its target markets and reinforcing professional and trustworthy relationships. For services that are keenly priced, and/or that have tight health and safety regulations, buyers and sellers often lack the motivation to consider sustainability requirements unless they are clearly valued and marketed. Business to business marketing requires suppliers to understand the relative importance of sustainability to each of their buyers and, in response, to develop appropriate arguments to explain the importance of sustainability within their buyers’ organisational needs.

© 2019, © 2019 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC. Purpose: As part of the recognition of the 25th anniversary of the Journal of Business-to-Business Marketing (JBBM), this paper presents an overview of the JBBM through a bibliometric analysis (BA) of its content from 1992 to 2016. The analysis focuses on the most cited articles and authors, h-index, publications per year, among others that typically are conducted for BAs. Design/Methodology/Approach: This paper begins with an introduction to the JBBM, showing its characteristics, its history as well as the editorial development and subsequent journal positioning. This information is followed by an analysis based on bibliometric methodology (BM) which considers the h-index, total citations (TCs), total papers (TPs), TC/TP ratio and other similar measures. To display this information, investigation was done to determine the most cited journals, articles, authors, universities and countries, ergo with the greatest incidence within JBBM. Analyzed are 329 articles, reviews and notes taken from the Scopus database for the periods between 1992 and 2016 for the JBBM. Findings: At the time of this work, the completion of the 25th anniversary of this journal, there is a rising trend in the number of JBBM publications per year. The researchers from the United States were most frequent contributors to the journal, while researchers from Germany, Australia, Norway and the United Kingdom were well represented. Multiple coauthors were more frequent while topics across the general model of business-to-business (B-to-B) marketing were typically found. Special issues on all three university-level education, technology in the classroom as well as Internet in effect B-to-B tactical marketing. Practical Implications: After observing the different perspectives of the journal’s production, we gain another objective view on the evolution of the JBBM in prior 25 years. This approach is useful for the readers of this journal in order to obtain a quick snapshot of the leading trends occurring in the journal and is similar as performed for many cognate titles. The many titles within marketing and the business disciplines may find such an exercise revelatory. Originality/Value: There is a trend where several journals (Journal of Marketing, Journal of Public Policy & Marketing, Journal of Marketing Research and Journal of Business Research) have produced special sections to show progress and contributions of these to scientific research using BA and BM. This paper does similarly for the JBBM.

Many marketing transactions between buyers and suppliers involve short-term collaborations or so-called temporary organizations. Such organizations have considerable value-creation potential but also face challenges, as evidenced by their mixed performance records. One particular challenge involves relationship governance, and in this respect, temporary organizations represent a conundrum: On the one hand, they pose significant governance problems due to the need to manage numerous independent specialists under time constraints. On the other hand, temporary organizations lack the inherent governance properties of other organizational forms such as permanent organizations. The authors conduct an empirical study of 429 business-to-business construction projects designed to answer two specific questions: First, how are particular selection and pricing strategies deployed in response to monitoring and coordination problems? Second, does the joint alignment between the two mechanisms and their respective attributes help mitigate cost overruns? The authors follow a formal hypothesis test with a series of in-depth interviews to explore and to gain insight into the validity of the key constructs, explanatory mechanisms, and outcomes. Managerially, the authors answer the long-standing question of how to mobilize a temporary organization. Theoretically, they develop an augmented “discriminating alignment” heuristic for relationship management involving multiple governance mechanisms and attributes.

Was heist eigentlich strategisches Business-to-Business-Marketing? Um diese Frage beantworten zu konnen, ist es hilfreich, folgende drei Strategieebenen zu unterscheiden, die in einem Unternehmen typischerweise existieren (vgl. Plinke 2002, S. 12ff.; Backhaus/Schneider 2007, S. 16ff.): die Ebenen der Unternehmens-, der Wettbewerbs- und der Funktionalstrategien (vgl. Abb. 3.1).

Robust conceptual frameworks are essential to building academic knowledge. Theory development involves high-quality conceptualization that integrates and builds on existing knowledge, possibly using a multi-disciplinary approach. Further, especially in an applied research area such as business-to-business marketing, the emerging theory will have meaningful implications for managerial decision-makers. Insightful conceptual framework development advances theory substantially, not incrementally. Theoretical development can be either purely conceptual or based on empirical data. Nevertheless, there are comparatively few guidelines for the process of conceptual framework development. This chapter discusses pathways to developing conceptual frameworks to support academic research, with emphasis on business-to-business marketing research. As guidelines and conventions are available for data-driven approaches such as grounded theory, we focus on theorizing processes in which existing theory plays a pivotal role.

Business practitioners tend to show little interest in academic journals, raising concerns that research-based knowledge potentially relevant to their managerial practice might evade them. The literature suggests academic writing style as one of the major reasons for this lack of interest. Against this background, we quantitatively examine the readability of 150 business-to-business (B2B) marketing research articles published in five leading journals. Our analysis identifies certain variations across journals and categories of papers, implying that it is possible to improve readability. We discuss the possible role of improved readability in encouraging practitioners to read B2B marketing research, while potentially increasing its relevance.