Under this special issue, topics as the following will be encouraged, but not limited to them
- Ethics of B2B marketing
Ethical aspects in B2B marketing cover many aspects: from ethics in business, in general, to ethics of salesforce, for example. New B2B models or new B2B marketing practices raise ethical concerns and open the floor for ethical approaches. Papers under this topic are welcome in the form of case studies, empirical investigations, or conceptual essays.
- New trends in the practice of B2B marketing
From models, practice, and theory, B2B marketing is an evolutionary domain, with plenty of aspects that are under continuous challenges and transformations (Hall, 2022). The new industry landscape and the changes in customers’ behaviour, for example, force B2B to reinvent itself, to adapt to or to transform itself for a better response to market needs and characteristics. Papers are expected to provide answers to these kinds of questions. These can be based on case studies, empirical evidence, or conceptual approaches.
- The role of technology in B2B marketing
Digitalization, Artificial Intelligence, and smart technologies, in general, have a profound impact on B2B marketing. From building online advertising to customers’ assistance (Jabbar, Akhtar and Dani 2019), or from the role of salesforce in the internet era, to analyzing big data capturing focal markets, from identifying new business opportunities to securing market transactions or to reduce costs, B2B marketing is impacted by the recent advancements in technologies. It is vital to probe into this complex issue as the role of technology in B2B marketing is growing very fast. For example, Artificial Intelligence is envisaged as an effective solution for businesses located in emerging markets (Zhou et al. 2022). However, studies have considered (Chen et al. 2019, p.1026) that there is a discrepancy between the enthusiasm businesses manifest towards introducing new technologies into B2B and the managerial guidance of actually doing it. Papers submitted under this area may follow theoretical approaches, case studies or empirical studies that express challenges, drivers, changes or instruments imposed by the digital era to B2B marketing.
- The war and B2B marketing.
The most important consequences of any conflict are measured through casualties. However, the consequences of any war extend to businesses also, in so many and complicated ways, that are hard even to list them. The recent Russian invasion of Ukraine, for example, caused massive disruptions in flows of gas, oil or food between all size companies from Russia and the rest of the world (Zang and Gao, 2022, p.72). As the conflict doesn’t show any sign of ending, it is expected that the waves of these disruptions will cover more and more companies and more industries. The papers under this track expect to cover not only these kinds of disruptions created by the Russian invasion of Ukraine, but also other kinds of conflicts that affect B2B marketing, how B2B marketing is impacted, challenges on specific components of B2B marketing, etc. Case studies, as well as conceptual approaches are considered valuable, as this topic is less approached in the literature and, unfortunately, is being increasingly encountered in practice.
- Climate change challenges for B2B marketing
It is difficult to identify a topic nowadays that is greater in significance than climate change. It has become an axiom that businesses are on both sides of the barricade: some have contributed to climate deterioration, while some others generated solutions. How B2B marketing can contribute to slow down the negative effects of climate change, or how B2B marketing is affected by climate change are the only two questions that represent a large body of literature, with plenty of room for improvement. Case studies, empirical research, or conceptual work are welcome under this rich and complex topic.
