Strategic Shifts between Business Types: A transaction cost theory-based approach supported by dyad simulation (Business-to-Business-Marketing)

Many companies in business-to-business markets hope to improve their profit situation considerably by fundamentally changing the technological or contractual dimensions of their market offerings. Often enough, reality does not live up to these expectations. Since such strategy shifts often imply substantial investments, a systematic ex ante analysis of the chances of success is an important issue in strategic management. Katrin Susanne Mühlfeld classifies the heterogeneous selling and purchasing processes on business-to-business markets and derives different business types. Against this background, she analyzes motivations and conditions for strategic changes of market offerings which can be interpreted as shifts between these business types. Transaction cost economics provide the main theoretical foundations while additional reference is made to Austrian economics and research on power-dependence relations. The range of products and services that are traded on business-to~business markets is very broad. It encompasses such heterogeneous goods as standardized software, machine tools, and power stations. Against this background of heterogeneity, the development of undifferentiated "one-for-all" marketing programmes is neither promising from the practitioner's perspective, nor consistent with an application-oriented approach in marketing science. Yet, at the same time, the pitfalls of overemphasizing the particularities of individual transactions, which lead to a lack of generalizability, are to be avoided. As a response to this dile=a, various conceptions for systematizing transactions on business-to-business markets have been developed in the past years. Co=on to all of these concepts, which are rather varied in terms of their methodology, are the objectives of identifying meaningful types of transaction processes (usually referred to as transaction or business types) and of deriving corresponding reco=endations to guide marketing practice. Co=on to all of them is, however, also a deficit: The approaches presented to date take into account only the heterogeneity that prevails at a certain point in time. They do not capture the potential change of market offerings over time, that is, the heterogeneity that arises from shifts between the different types in the course of time. The existent approaches are, hence, static in the sense that they treat the criteria that are used for categorization as given. They do not interpret them as variables that are susceptible to the transaction parties' design. Front Matter....Pages I-XVIII Strategic shifts between business types as essential elements of the market process....Pages 1-10 Strategic decisions for business-type specific marketing in industrial goods markets....Pages 11-99 Dynamic perspective I: fundamental considerations on strategic shifts between business types constellations....Pages 100-179 Dynamic perspective II: considerations on sufficient conditions for shifts between business types constellations....Pages 180-258 Conclusion....Pages 259-264 Back Matter....Pages 265-322 Katrin Muhlfeld analyzes motivations and conditions for strategic changes of market offerings which can be interpreted as shifts between different business types. Transaction cost economics provide the main theoretical foundations while additional reference is made to Austrian economics and research on power-dependence relations. Katrin Mühlfeld analyzes motivations and conditions for strategic changes of market offerings which can be interpreted as shifts between different business types. Transaction cost economics provide the main theoretical foundations while additional reference is made to Austrian economics and research on power-dependence relations.