A major decision for a company selling projects-to-order is to decide whether to bid or not on a specific project. Bidding for a project, usually through a competitive bidding process, involves both a huge expense in preparing the answer to the bid and an important mobilisation of resources that...

Over the past twenty years, relationship marketing has represented a renaissance in marketing and even a paradigmatic change according to some. The shift has had uncertain effects, however, and its applications have faced some serious challenges. Questions are being asked about the future of...

Competitive bidding has tended to be based on the principle of pricing over other criteria, rather than on a specific business relationship in the past. This implies that the bidder will generally place himself in a position that reinforces his chances of award on a "one off" basis, without...

Recent aspects of Western life in general and of consumption particularly demonstrate a major trend - that of postmodernism - as we approach the coming fin de siècle. This article looks at postmodern thinking as it affects marketing. Notwithstanding the strong French influence on this cultural...

In the project business what is truly relevant is not that the project eventually is finalized in time and according to the budget, but that the customer is satisfied with the overall experience of the company. In this paper, we discuss the case of a construction company that gained competitive...

The last 10 years have seen an increase in the importance of buyers in industry, and changes in their relationships with suppliers. Bernard Cova and Robert Salle examine the two major schools of thought on buyer-supplier relations at the present time -- European and American. They also look...

The purpose of this article is to go far beyond competitive bidding strategies and consequently to highlight the fact that project marketing and system selling mainly consist in the management of a firm's relationships to a local network of business and non-business actors, named the milieu....

Summary In this paper we draw together the changing orientations that have been shaping the project business arena during the past years and discuss their implications for the future of project marketing theory and practice. Based on empirical qualitative data from two longitudinal research...