Industrial Marketing Communication: A (R)evolutionary Journey from Marketplace to Marketspace

Abstract

This thesis looks back over a ca 10-year period, 1994-2005, on the use of marketing communication tools in industrial markets. The year 1994 is significant in two ways: First, it was the year I was hired as a doctoral student at Luleå University of Technology in Sweden. The year is also significant as it is around this time (1994-95) that the Internet became commercialized and openly available for use beyond simple, point-and-click information retrieval. This decade-long journey was broken into two parts: The first part explored the entire industrial marketing communication toolbox, where both personal and nonpersonal tools, as well as the emerging Internet were used for industrial sellers to provide information, as compared to what industrial buyers were using to obtain information. The second part looked at the Internet as a marketing communication tool onto itself. The first part of the study (1994-1998), resulted in a Licentiate thesis entitled "Industrial Marketing Communication: An Empirical Investigation on the Use of Marketing Communication Tools" (Foster, 1998). It is provided here synoptically as Study A. In Study A, industrial sellers and buyers were investigated as to how they utilized all of the marketing communication tools within the industrial marketing communication toolbox. It was found that there was still a heavy reliance on personal, non-commercial forms of marketing communication, primarily personal selling. The non-personal forms of marketing communication, or the "tools" within the compartments of advertising, sales promotion, public relations, and direct marketing, were also utilized, but not in the same way or to the same degree. The Internet was seen neither as a purely personal nor as only a non-personal form of communication, so it was given its own "compartment" in the toolbox, as highlighted in Study A's conceptual framework as an additional (new) "industrial cyber space" (or area) within the toolbox. Although being utilized at the time by industrial sellers and buyers, primarily via tools such as websites and to a certain degree e-mail, the Internet was considered a little-used but potentially valuable "marketing communication tool of the future." It was this finding that became the foundation and the invitation to investigate the Internet as a marketing communication tool onto itself in "the future." This became the focus of the next phase of the study. The second part of this study picked up where the first part left off and took place during the years 1999-2005. It started with looking at the literature on the use of the Internet in industrial (B2B) markets, and more specifically at the use of websites as industrial marketing communication tools. This in turn became the foundation for Study B in this doctoral thesis, "The Internet as an Industrial Marketing Communication Tool." For various reasons, chief among them the v flexibility with investigating the area at a time when so much was changing and at such a rapid pace, an article format was chosen over continuing on with the m...

The effect of marketing communication on business relationship loyalty

“…In the same vein, the formerly superior effectiveness of face-to-face communication is now seen a slightly different light. In particular, trade shows have been a laborious but necessary part of the industrial marketing toolbox (Foster, 2006;McArthur and Griffin, 1997), whereas in this study, industrial customers did not consider trade shows to be very effective.…”

“…In the present results, communication quality was related to increased loyalty to the supplier firm. Foster (2006) concluded that internet-based marketing tools were considered to have potential only in the "future" of industrial marketing communication. The findings about the perceived effectiveness of e-mail communication suggest that in recent years, industrial customers' preferences have clearly shifted to digital channels.…”

The role of digital channels in industrial marketing communications

“…For example, research has recently examined ways to combine DMC with traditional marketing communications to communicate with industrial customers (Foster, 2005;Michaelidou et al, 2011), likely because traditional marketing communications (e.g. industrial advertising) play a lesser role than customer relationship management, personal interaction and other variables in the industrial marketing mix -namely, product, price and place (Foster, 2006;Gilliland and Johnston, 1997;Jackson et al, 1987). Every company faces the question of how to maximize the potential gains from digital media channels.…”

The Organization of the Future and the Marketing Function

“…As it was previously argued, Internet represented a change in the way people communicated with each other and, in turn, with organizations. A number of studies argue that information technologies have shifted the marketing function focus from the "marketplace" to the "marketspace", where marketers need to engage in a bidirectional exchange of goods, services and information with customers (Foster, 2015;Rayport and Sviokla, 1994;Vandermerwe, 2014). The key term used extensively during the nineties to describe some of the responsibilities of marketing positions was interactivity (Lordan, 2006).…”