What practitioners think
Marketing to Business Research Projects
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Cranfield research project
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JA Consulting research
1. Cranfield Research Project
Research objectives
To ensure the usefulness of the information provided in this canon, the project group decided to carry out primary research and ask marketers working in the field about their current practices:
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what marketing principles and tools were being used;
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what textbooks or theories practitioners? referred to or thought worthwhile; and
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what key areas of marketing they considered to be the most important to senior practitioners in the b2b sector.
Sampling
The interviewees for this research were sourced from CIM members? database which included both public and private sector marketing practitioners.
The group anticipated that differences would exist between public and private sector b2b organisations, therefore the research also compared feedback from the interviewees of both sectors.
Key insights:
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Whilst there is work being done by academics in b2b marketing, this research does not seem to be identified or used by practitioners.
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This could be because research is not being published in practitioner journals or other media that are easily accessible to the interviewees and/or the format is not practical for application in the field.
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B2b marketing is not generally included in formal marketing education. This is reflected in the fact that a consortium of b2b organisations has established a sales and industrial marketing diploma to help fill the gap in b2b marketing education for their organisations.
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Marketing educators need to teach b2b marketing alongside the ?sexy? fmcg marketing to produce more rounded marketing graduates that will be equally useful to both b2b and fmcg organisations.
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Four areas emerged, in which practitioners said they would value best practice models:
1. Customers and relationships
2. Market research: customers, products, services, competitors
3. Planning the marketing and selling activities
4. Allocation of resources to the business winning process
View the full research report, by clicking on the download below.
In response to the findings of the research, the project team have developed a series of factfiles for practitioners. To view the factfiles on:
2. JA Consulting Research
Research objectives
Recent insights into ten leading B2B companies - what makes them succesful and how they practice Global Account Management.
View the full research report, click here.