Business Marketing: An Interaction and Network Perspective

Changing Views of Business Marketing This book aims to provide an in-depth understanding of long-term busi­ in industrial markets. During the late 1980s our view ness relationships on business marketing changed remarkably. From a single-transaction­ oriented, market mechanism-based description of marketing and purchas­ ing, we are moving into domestic and international buyer-seller relation­ ships. In academic terms, we are experiencing a broadening of the para­ digms that describe how companies interact. This change in focus has its roots in the recognition that business marketing is frequently characterized by long-term interaction, coopera­ tion, and coalitions between participant firms. The forces of quality, total cost management, and the need to decrease response times in new prod­ uct/service development all are combining to accelerate the trend to­ wards strategic relationships. In increasingly global markets, different forms of strategic alliances provide ways of joining forces in attempts to reach goals beyond any single firm's resources. Also, our way of seeing the corporate environment is changing. In­ stead of the traditional view of markets or industries as constituted by independent companies operating mainly through market competition, we are starting to realize that markets can be more realistically defined and described as networks of interlinked organizations. The network view offers a highly promising tool for describing and analyzing the rapidly integrating global marketplace. For instance, strategic alliances can be seen as moves of establishing positions in a network or as ways of changing the whole network.