Marketing competencies and the sources of customer value in business markets

This introduction to the special issue discusses the notion of marketing competencies in buyer–supplier relationships, and the role these competencies play in creating value for the customer. Existing work on the role of competencies in industrial marketing has two main foci. The first, established approach deals with competencies as inputs to organizational processes, and seeks to establish in how far marketing competencies such as customer relationship management, channel design, etc. lead to superior financial returns. The second, emerging, approach focuses on the marketing of competencies as a source for customer value. This article uses supply and demand side perspectives to look at these two approaches and suggests a typolology involving four distinct value-creation strategies. Recent literature is discussed and implications for advancing the application of resource-based thinking to industrial marketing are provided.