Purpose – Firms collaborate for many reasons; however, sharing resources would seem a primary motive. This paper seeks to argue that in many instances firms collaborate to become part of a knowledge network – to learn about their industry and collectively use their knowledge to serve their...

In the first decade of the 21st century we can now look back and reflect on how perceptions of and research into industrial markets (or should we call them B2B markets?) have changed and developed. In this e-book of the European Journal of Marketing, we attempt, through our selection of papers,...

Purpose: Recent research places an increased emphasis on the inclusion of the customer in value creation, learning and innovation processes; yet, there remains a gap in the understanding of just how such customer involvement may work. This paper aims to address this gap by examining two aspects...

This study focuses on the potential difficulties in implementing a relationship marketing strategy within a retail context. We suggest that a number of attributes characterise the nature of the service and market structure are influential in an organisation’s ability to implement relationship...

Purpose – This paper aims to examine the characteristics of buyer‐supplier relationship dissolution in China. Design/methodology/approach – The paper presents the results of nine in‐depth interviews of Chinese managers of dissolved long‐term business relationships. Findings – The...

Purpose – This paper aims to look at what CRM 2.0 is and how it impacts customer insights. It will show how CRM 2.0's incorporation of social tools and strategies with traditional operational functions meets the demands of twenty‐first century “social” customers....

Purpose – This paper seeks to give empirical examples of the processes whereby networks learn to collaborate. Specifically, the authors aim to examine efforts to learn to collaborate in response to the challenge of climate change. Design/methodology/approach – The paper uses case study...

Purpose – This study sets out to examine the relationship between firms' learning orientation and network collaboration. The aim is to investigate how learning orientation enhances network collaboration and to discuss the role of the co‐innovation focus in the learning orientation‐network...

Purpose – Facing increasing global competition, firms must ceaselessly acquire new knowledge and enhance their capabilities in response to rapidly changing customer requirements. Amidst the varying collaborative relationships that occur between firms, it is particularly important for firms to...