BACKGROUND
Business-to-business marketing is evolving from a product/service to a solution focus. Marketing managers and their organizations are driven to offer solutions to their customers i.e. provide answers to highly specific and unique demands of the customer. In doing so, business-to-business marketing stresses the relevance of marketing approaches already developed in project business.
Project business concerns complex transactions covering a discrete package of products, services and work specifically designed to create capital assets that produce benefits for a buyer over an extended period of time. As such, projects are largely associated with the award of contracts in areas such as defense, construction, engineering, enterprise management systems, information technology, telecommunications, aerospace and shipbuilding etc.
The purpose of this special issue is to provide an overview of today theory and practice in project marketing and marketing solutions and to investigate the way to develop synergies between them. The following list is not intended to be all-inclusive but merely illustrative of some interesting issues covering by this invitation.
Beyond competitive bidding strategies;
How to manage discontinuity in project business;
Networking to anticipate projects;
Managing customer relationships in project activities;
How to manage project stakeholders (financial, technical, political, societal);
Pre-bid analysis and the screening of projects;
Choice of entry mode in the project pyramid;
Bundling internal and external resources to make a solution;
Putting a price on solutions;
Organizing the company for solution marketing;
The limits of the solution approach
The purchase of projects, systems, full-service contracts, package deals, etc.
SUBMISSIONS
To be considered for publication in this special issue, manuscript must be received by
May 30, 2005.
They should be sent to bcova@escp-eap.net, salle@em-lyon.com
and plaplaca@journalimm.com
Please follow the guidelines to contributors to Industrial Marketing Management available in the current issue of IMM or at :
http://authors.elsevier.com/JournalDetail.html?PubID=505720&Precis=