The structure and evolution of business-to-business marketing: A citation and co-citation analysis

The field of business-to-business (B2B) marketing has grown considerably in the past four decades. However the state of knowledge about its structure and evolution remains limited. Who are the key players and what are the key papers in B2B marketing? What main research topics have been investigated over time? This article answers these questions by applying bibliometric methods for the first time to the existing body of scholarly B2B research. The key findings reveal a highly dynamic discipline in the 1970s and 1980s, when new knowledge was being intensively exchanged among an increasing number of B2B researchers. Since that time, the pace of development has slowed, and diversification in the discipline manifested itself in a distinctive number of core research subfields. Yet initial research topics such as organizational buying behavior, where much research is still undone, are to a large extent not addressed by modern B2B scholars.

► First citation and co-citation analyses of B2B-marketing literature.
► The study reveals the most influential publications and authors in the field.
► We objectively detect the main B2B-research fronts in four time periods since 1972.
► The later co-citation networks show the growing impact of the IMP-Group.
► On the whole B2B-research becomes more diversified yet interrelated over time.