This research explored important questions concerning how top-performing African B2B service brands position their brands in this increasingly globalised, technology-driven and competitive digital ecosystem. In Study 1, we performed a content analysis of the homepages of the websites of 140 top-performing African B2B service brands to explore the most frequently used positioning signals. In Study 2, we conducted semi-structured interviews with 32 managers to understand the processes, challenges and, ultimately, the tension involved in managing their brands. Our analysis revealed tensions around curating a sense of professionalism, building a sense of trustworthiness and being proud of African roots. The research contributes to the literature on B2B brand positioning to show how the alignment between the signal on delivered positioning on brand websites and managers’ perception in developing brand positioning may shape different positioning strategies. In addition, the study offers practical implications for managers of B2B service brands in Africa on how to develop their brands, decide the possible signals to include in their websites and manage the branding tension within their business operations in the best way.

Online personalisation has recently become a trend across the Internet. By using consumer data and advances in technology, brands are able to provide individual users with different content across the same platform through personalisation. Despite benefits for both marketers and consumers being evident, there are growing concerns regarding the provision of personal data for this purpose. This chapter aims to explore how Millennials perceive the cost and benefits of online personalisation in the context of search engines, as well as how they interact with personalised platforms. The results of an online survey of UK consumers suggest that privacy concerns and perceived benefits especially influence Millennials’ willingness to interact with search engine personalisation in the disclosure of personal data. Privacy concerns affect willingness to disclose contact data in particular, which appears to be a cost that Millennials overall appear unwilling to forgo for greater personalisation online. However, Millennials are found to desire high levels of personalisation either side of this concern. Interestingly, a positive relationship is found between Internet expertise and the perceived value of search engine personalisation. No evidence is found to suggest control or consumer-brand relationship as significantly influential in Millennials’ perceptions of search engine personalisation.

In academic and business literature, suppliers providing solutions to their business-to-business (B2B) customers are often described as achieving increased customer retention, higher sales volumes, and enhanced cross-selling. Yet there is limited empirical evidence to support the positive impact of solutions on these customer-related outcomes. Moreover, it is unclear whether suppliers obtain similar outcomes from buyers at different relationship life-cycle stages. This paper aims to address these two gaps and tests the contingency role of the relationship life-cycle in driving future customer outcomes. It proposes that there is a positive effect for solutions provided to recent customers (labeled as “accelerator” role) rather than to established ones (labeled as “leverage” role). Results from a longitudinal analysis of the sales database of a North American company providing solutions to its customers empirically support the “accelerator” role of solutions.

Offering B-to-B ‘customer solutions’ has been associated with positive outcomes for suppliers. Yet, empirical evidence documenting such claims has not been established. The literature is also unclear on whether gains are superior when solutions target established as opposed to new customers. We use the ‘process-centric’ view of solutions, together with ‘relationship lifecycle’ theory to develop two competing mechanisms—‘solution as leverage’ and ‘solution as accelerator’—by which to explain the link between outcome and solution provision for established versus new customers. The analysis of longitudinal sales data from a North American solution provider: (1) empirically confirms the positive impact of solution provision on outcomes; and (2) supports the ‘solution as accelerator’ explanation suggesting that suppliers achieve equal or superior outcomes when efforts are directed at new customers.

Using signaling theory, this event study aims at determining the effect of announcements about marketing channel awards on recipient company value. The dataset consists of press releases announcing awards to U.S. public companies (1993-2012), matched with financial data. The analysis focuses on award recipients (n=178 events). Results indicate that there are no positive abnormal returns associated with channel award announcements; and there is also no difference when taking the source (individual company or external stakeholder) of the award into account. Returns are positive, however, when awards are presented at dedicated events and to firms operating in concentrated industries. In effect, investors appear to value awards primarily for their visibility in recognizing channel players and for their differentiation potential in concentrated markets.

After the initial launch of a new product, distributors are frequently among the first to learn about product-related problems through the information they get about how it is perceived and used by customers, and how it might be improved or adapted for broader market coverage. For producers, such information, which has the potential to impact new product development (NPD) activities during the product lifecycle management (PLM) phase that follows launch, can be decisive for ensuring the continued viability of the product in the medium-to-longer term. The goal of this article is to better understand how distributors contribute to producer PLM activities by engaging in product-related information processing. A typology of four distinct scenarios is developed by integrating three conceptual themes: organizational information processing, dynamic capabilities, and task complexity. Each scenario results from the interplay of the distributor’s level (low/high) of capability—specifically, a combination of information coordination and management of inter-organization relations—and of the degree (low/high) of complexity of the product-related problem. The four scenarios are analysed and described in terms of NPD-related information processing. According to the typology, distributors act as ‘problem informers’ (low capability/high complexity), ‘solution advisors’ (low capability/low complexity), ‘solution implementers’ (high capability/low complexity) or ‘solution managers’ (high capability/high complexity). 14 in-depth interviews with distributors and producers in industrial goods provide empirical evidence for the analysis, description and support of each scenario. The article contributes to NPD by shedding light on the role of distributors in terms of incremental innovation in the context of PLM. Developers of new products can use the typology in planning for distributor involvement in PLM activities; distributors can use it to map out their current and future level of engagement in PLM-related activities.