Industrial Marketing Management

Special Issue on

Business Models – Exploring value drivers and the role of marketing

Submission Deadline: January 31, 2012

Guest Editors: Michael Ehret, Jochen Wirtz and Vishal Kashyap

Business Modelling – The rise of a Management Concepts and the need for Research

Business models have captured growing attention in academic research on strategic management and innovation.  Driven by the performance of open business models practiced by companies like Procter & Gamble or IBM, researchers have started to study conditions, policies and performance of business models. This call for papers seeks research on business modelling in business-to-business environments.  Business-to-business case studies of business modelling are quite welcome.

Business models have captured growing attention in academic research on strategic management and innovation. Crucial functions are to articulate a value proposition, identify a target segment and revenue generation mechanism, define the structure of the value chain, estimate the cost structure and profit potential, describe the position of the firm within the value chain and formulate  competitive strategies (Chesbrough 2010).

While most published research highlights the potential unlocked by open business models, it rarely provides valid concepts for antecedents or theoretical reasons for the performance of a particular business model in a particular context.

Despite their close relation to genuine marketing topics (value proposition, market segmentation, marketing channels), and their implications for growing markets for business-services and rising significance of inter-organizational marketing approaches, little research in marketing can be found. The accelerating rate of adoption of business modelling by managers raises significant implications and opportunities for marketing researchers:

• Systematic Features of Business Model Performance: Pioneering studies of business models focused on the potential unlocked by opening up of business models. However there is evidence that open business models can and do fail on the project level (as Qualcomm’s digital cinema, see Chesbrough 2006), the firm level (Chesbrough 2006) or on industry level (as the Bio-Pharma collaboration, see Pisano 2006). What are the salient antecedents, policies and practices that drive the performance of a business model?
• Implications of Business Models for B2B Marketing: How does the adoption of business models by strategic management affect market opportunities and the design of marketing strategies? What are the implications for the design of marketing channels, the use of marketing partnerships and the segmentation of customers? How do business models affect product policy, e.g. via a growing share of services? Do business models open up new options for pricing and what methods can support pricing decisions? How can business model design help to tap into the potential of social networks for marketing?
• Open Business Models and the Rise of Inter-organizational Marketing approaches: To the extent that companies are adopting open business models, inter-organizational marketing approaches are gaining ground (e.g. Ehret and Wirtz  2010, Chesbrough 2011). What are the antecedents to the performance of inter-organizational collaboration? How do governance structure and contract arrangements impact the performance of business models? How does relationship management affect the performance of a certain business model?
• Open Business Models and the rising significance of services: A significant implication of the opening-up of business models is the growing significance of external sourced services as an alternative to internal operations of a firm. How is the re-organization of businesses related to access to business services and their performance? What opportunities and challenges arise for the positioning of service firms?

This Special Issue explores foundations for systematic business model design and its implications for marketing research and management. Our major interest is on linking empirical findings to an underlying understanding of the rationale of business modelling that empowers our competencies to design well performing business models.

Business Models and Marketing – Towards a systematic approach

The opening-up of business models has been driving the evolution of new markets and is affecting the performance of marketing programs. Open business models call for a growing share of inter-organizational marketing approaches and a stronger emphasis on service-strategies. This special issue presents empirical data and conceptual contributions and integrates them towards a systematic treatment of business models and their impact on marketing practices and their performance. It provides an account of how business models have been transforming markets and called for emerging marketing practices. The contributors open-up an avenue for systematic empirical studies of the antecedents of open business models, validate theories of systematic forces affecting business model design and analyse the performance of marketing practices in the context of business model design. Thus this special Issue provides the first systematic attempt to elucidate the relevance of business modelling for marketing and expose it to a systematic academic study.

References

Chesbrough, Henry (2010): Business Model Innovation: Opportunities and Barriers. Long Range Planning 43 (2010), pp. 354-363.

Chesbrough, Henry (2011): Open Services Innovation: Rethinking Your Business to Grow and Compete in a New Era [Hardcover], San Francisco (Wiley) 2011.

Chesbrough, Henry (2006) open Innovation: The New Imperative for Creating and Profiting from Technology. Boston. MA (Harvard Business School Press), pp.2006.

Ehret, Michael and Jochen Wirtz (2011): Division of Labor between Firms: Business Services, Non-Ownership-Value and the Rise of the Service Economy, Service Science Vol.2, No.3 (Fall 2010), pp. 136-145

Pisano, G.P. (2006a) Science Business: The Promise, the Reality and the Future of Biotech Bos

See this paper for more background:  https://service-science.info/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/EHRET_WIRTZ