Authors: David Ford; Kristin Balslev Munksgaard
This paper attempts to describe, analyse and make sense of the development of business marketing companies and their counterparts. To do this, the paper examines the experiences of four companies that trade with each other. The paper builds on research into business development in the economics, strategy and marketing literature and to previous research in the IMP network tradition. The paper concludes that the development of business marketing companies can usefully be interpreted as a process of discontinuous progression that takes place between individually-significant counterparts. This conclusion challenges the emphasis that has been placed on the supposed stability of resource structures, business relationships and networks in previous research. The paper presents an initial development of the concept of discontinuous development. Finally, the paper uses this development and the case analysis to provide managerial prescriptions for the task of business development
Journal: ( – )
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Publish Year: 2016
Conference: Cape Town (2016)