Purpose

The business-to-business (B2B) marketing literature is heavily focused on the manufacturing sector. However, it is the B2B service sector that shows the highest growth in gross domestic product (GDP). Beyond a vibrant stream of literature on servitization, the B2B literature has neglected drawing on the wider service literature. This paper aims to examine recent streams of service research that have promising implications and research opportunities for B2B marketing.

Design/methodology/approach

Together, the author team has decades of research, managerial and executive teaching experience related to B2B marketing and services marketing and management. The observations and reflections in this paper originate from this unique perspective and are supplemented by insights from 16 expert interviews.

Findings

The authors identify and discuss in this paper four broad and related themes from the service literature that can stimulate B2B research and practice. First, the authors highlight the implications for capturing value in economies with their rapidly increasing specialization and related growth in B2B services. Specifically, the authors explain where B2B firms should focus on to gain bargaining power in the value chains of the future. Second, an additional strategy to enhance a B2B firm’s power to capture value is servitization, which allows firms to get closer to their customers, increase their switching costs and build strategic partnerships. The authors explore how firms can use service productization to enhance their chances of successful servitization. Third, servitization is expensive, and productivity and scalability are often a challenge in B2B contexts. These issues are tackled in a recent service research stream on cost-effective service excellence (CESE) where the authors derive implications for B2B firms. Fourth and related to CESE, latest developments in intelligent automation offer exciting opportunities for B2B services to be made more scalable.

Originality/value

This paper is based on the unique perspective of the author team and a panel of experts and connects major streams of service research to the B2B literature.

中文翻译：

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将“服务”融入 B2B 营销：服务研究的关键发展及其与 B2B 的相关性

目的

企业对企业 (B2B) 营销文献主要关注制造业。然而，B2B 服务业的国内生产总值 (GDP) 增长最快。除了大量关于服务化的文献外，B2B 文献忽略了利用更广泛的服务文献。本文旨在研究最近对 B2B 营销具有前景的影响和研究机会的服务研究流。

设计/方法/方法

作者团队共同拥有数十年与 B2B 营销和服务营销与管理相关的研究、管理和执行教学经验。本文的观察和思考源于这种独特的视角，并辅以来自 16 位专家访谈的见解。

发现

作者在本文中确定并讨论了服务文献中可以激发 B2B 研究和实践的四个广泛且相关的主题。首先，作者强调了在快速增长的专业化和 B2B 服务相关增长的经济体中获取价值的意义。具体来说，作者解释了 B2B 公司应该关注哪些方面以获得未来价值链中的议价能力。其次，增强 B2B 公司获取价值的能力的另一个策略是服务化，它使公司能够更贴近客户、增加转换成本并建立战略合作伙伴关系。作者探讨了公司如何使用服务产品化来提高成功服务化的机会。第三，服务化成本高，生产力和可扩展性通常是 B2B 环境中的挑战。这些问题在最近关于成本效益卓越服务 (CESE) 的服务研究流中得到解决，作者从中得出对 B2B 公司的影响。第四，与 CESE 相关，智能自动化的最新发展为 B2B 服务的可扩展性提供了令人兴奋的机会。

原创性/价值

本文基于作者团队和专家小组的独特视角，将主要的服务研究流与 B2B 文献联系起来。