INDUSTRIAL MARKETING MANAGEMENT

Call for Papers

Special Issue on Business Actor Engagement: Foundations, Developments and Opportunities

Deadline: 15 December, 2016

One of the current challenges facing businesses is how to engage and build longer-lasting and deeper connections with direct customers and, where appropriate, end customers (Wiersema 2013). In recognition of this challenge, the last decade has seen an increased recognition and understanding of the concept of ‘customer engagement’, which reflects the increasingly dynamic and interactive environments in which businesses are operating. The scholarly work on customer engagement has found that engagement occurs by virtue of focal interactive experiences between actors in specific service relationships (Brodie et al. 2011) and extends marketing’s scope beyond the point of sale (van Doorn et al., 2010). The strategic development of customer engagement is posited to result in increased consumer advocacy, enhanced service and product innovation, and mutual value co-creation for all parties (Brodie et al., 2011). In consumer markets, engaged customers have been found to display enhanced loyalty and satisfaction (Jaakkola and Alexander 2014) resulting in the development of corporate competitive advantage (Kumar and Pansari 2015). While these positive outcomes of customer engagement may replicate in business environments, there has been few studies conducted focussing on engagement in a business-to-business context.

The nature of the complex interpersonal relationships, the interdependence between the buyer and seller and broader value network actors, as well as the importance of individual relationships to overall firm performance (Macdonald et al. 2016), enhance the importance of engagement between actors in a B2B context (Kumar and Pansari, 2015). Kumar and Pansari (2015) recently found the effects of employee engagement on customer engagement and the result impact of both types of engagement on firm performance is enhanced in firms operating in a business-to-business context; hence highlighting the importance of further understanding business actor engagement.

Recent literature has recognised the need to extend the notion of ‘customer engagement’ to other key stakeholders, or actors, in a service system (e.g., Chandler and Lusch 2015). Investigation of actor engagement in complex service settings recognises that engagement occurs not only between both the buyers and sellers, but also between individual actors and firms (also actors), and between firms (e.g. suppliers) (Kumar and Pansari 2015). Whereas the customer engagement literature most commonly recognises the dyadic interaction between a customer and a brand (Brodie et al., 2011), business actor engagement recognises the multiple actors, and multiple touch-points within the service system. The complexity of the service system is such that when engagement occurs between actors, these interactions affect institutional contexts within which they are nested, which hence impact future interactions and engagement (Koskela-Huotari and Vargo 2016). However, to date there has been little research examining the embedded nature of business actor engagement in a service system; hence there is a need for further attention to be given to actor engagement in a business-to-business context.

The purpose of this special issue call is to bring together high quality contemporary research on actor engagement in the business-to-business context with a view to addressing challenges and recent developments, and providing interesting managerial implications and opportunities for future researchers. We are open to both conceptual and empirical manuscripts that fit the scope of the Special Issue, and welcome submissions using different methodological approaches. Possible topics include, but are not limited to:

• Frameworks for conceptualizing and measuring business actor engagement
• Engagement patterns and practices in B2B contexts
• The role of actors facilitating business actor engagement within and across service systems
• Homogeneous vs. heterogeneous business actor engagement intensities and valences
• The effect of multiple-actor engagement on aggregate business actor engagement
• The role of relationships and relational influences for business actor engagement
• The role of institutional symbols, signs and meaning-making for business actor engagement
• Temporal influences on B2B engagement (i.e. business actor engagement over time; long-term versus short-term engagement; engagement of new and long term business partners)
• Engagement platforms supporting business actor engagement
• Financial and other performance outcomes of business actor engagement
• Business actor disengagement and negative consequences of business actor engagement
• Business actor engagement in design-led or innovative environments
• Business actor engagement in non-profit and non-traditional sectors

Submission Procedures
To submit a paper please visit the IMM editorial site http://ees.elsevier.com/imm/ register as an author and submit the paper as the site will instruct you. When you get to the step in the process that asks you for the type of paper, select SI: Business Actor Engagement. All queries about the special issue should be sent to the Guest Editors (see above).

Guest Editors:

• Jodie Conduit (University of Adelaide, Australia, jodie.conduit@adelaide.edu.au)
• Ingo Karpen (RMIT University, Australia, ingo.karpen@rmit.edu.au)
• Carolin Plewa (University of Adelaide, Australia, carolin.plewa@adelaide.edu.au)
• Michael Kleinaltenkamp (Freie Universität Berlin, Germany, michael.kleinaltenkamp@fu-berlin.de)

References

Brodie, Roderick J., Linda D. Hollebeek, Biljana Juric, and Ana Ilic (2011), “Customer Engagement: Conceptual Domain, Fundamental Propositions, and Implications for Research,” Journal of Service Research, 14 (3), 252–71.

Chandler, Jennifer D. and Robert F. Lusch (2015), “Service systems: a broadened framework and research agenda on value propositions, engagement, and service experience,” Journal of Service Research, 18 (1), 6-22.

Jaakkola, Elina and Matthew Alexander (2014), “The Role of Customer Engagement Behavior in Value Co-Creation: A Service System Perspective,” Journal of Service Research, 17 (3), 247–61.

Kumar, V. and Anita Pansari (2015), "Competitive Advantage through Engagement." Journal of Marketing Research, doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1509/jmr.15.0044.

Macdonald, Emma K., Kleinaltenkamp, Michael and Wilson, Hugh N. (2016), “How business customers judge solutions: solution quality and value-in-use,” Journal of Marketing, http://dx.doi.org/10.1509/jm.15.0109

Van Doorn, Jenny, Katherine N. Lemon, Vikas. Mittal, Stephan Nass, Doreén Pick, Peter Pirner, and Peter C. Verhoef (2010), “Customer Engagement Behavior: Theoretical Foundations and Research Directions,” Journal of Service Research, 13 (3), 253–66.

Wiersema, F. (2013). The B2B agenda: The current state of B2B marketing and a look ahead. Industrial Marketing Management, 42(4), 470-488.

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