ISBM Research Newsletter - Volume 17, Issue 1 - October 2024
Table of Contents
In This Issue . . .
We hope your academic year is off to a great start! We are excited to share some good news with you about the ISBM.
It was wonderful to welcome many of you to the Smeal College of Business at Penn State for the 2024 ISBM PhD Camp, Academic Conference, and Corporate Members Meeting in June. We welcomed 140 participants. For the first time in a long time, we organized all three events in parallel to connect B2B marketing academics and practitioners. In the Feature, Stefan talks in more detail about these events and ISBM’s renewed focus to connect B2B marketing academia and practice. The Feature also covers the new ISBM Distinguished Research Fellows and the inaugural class of ISBM Scholars—an entirely new initiative.
In June, Lisa Scheer (Karl-Franzens-Universität Graz, Austria) and Kersi Antia (Western University) organized yet another inspiring Doctoral Camp. Thanks so much, Lisa and Kersi for putting together an exceptional program! Read their reflections on the camp here. ISBM Executive Director Lynn Yanyo shares her perspective from the Corporate Membership on the June events as well as new exciting initiatives around Artificial Intelligence.
During the June events, we received wonderful news. We are extremely grateful to ISBM Directors Emeritus Irwin Gross, Gary Lilien, and Ralph Oliva for creating and funding the new ISBM Founders Fund. This Fund will enable us to organize various new and more impactful initiatives in the coming years. The announcement of the Fund was made at an event recognizing ISBM’s Founding Research Director Gary Lilien’s retirement from Penn State, where he held the position of Research Professor since 1981. Generations of B2B Marketing students and scholars have known Gary not only as the academic personification of the ISBM but also as a fantastic mentor. We plan to keep on picking his brain in the coming years—rest assured, we haven’t seen the last of him!
Looking ahead, please encourage your doctoral students to send in an abstract for the 2024 ISBM Doctoral Support Award Competition, due November 18. Finalists will be informed by December 6 and have until January 31 to submit full proposals. Up to three winners will be awarded up to $5,000 each to support their research in business markets. Doctoral students in B2B marketing may also consider our Spring 2025 online IPSS seminar, by Vivek Astvansh on Establishing Causality: A Multi-Method Approach. To make the IPSS seminars as accessible as possible, we now offer up to 80% scholarships for eligible students.
Finally, the ISBM is proud to sponsor the B2B Connect Symposium at the upcoming EMAC Conference in Madrid as well as the AMA-Sheth Consortium at Ohio State.
We hope you will enjoy reading this Newsletter! Stay tuned.
Warm greetings,
Stefan and Andrew
Stefan Wuyts
Director, ISBM
Email: suw282@psu.edu
J. Andrew Petersen
Associate Director, ISBM
Email: jap57@psu.edu
Feature: Connecting B2B Marketing Academics and Practitioners
Every so often, all organizations – firms, colleges, research institutes – must reconsider what it is that makes them unique. Where do we create the most value? The ISBM is no exception. As we find ourselves in excellent shape thanks to our Corporate Members and the generous support of ISBM Founders, we have initiated the process of developing a strategic plan for 2025-2027. One key differentiator already stands out: the ISBM has unique access to a global network of B2B marketing academics and to a vibrant US-based network of B2B marketing industry experts and practitioners. We plan to intensify our efforts to take advantage of that unique position and create new connections between academic scholars and practitioners. In this Feature, I take the ISBM events in June 2024 as an example of how we can do things differently and forge real connections between academics and practitioners. I also share the latest on our ISBM Distinguished Research Fellows program as well as a brand-new program, ISBM Scholars.
2024 ISBM Academic Conference and Corporate Members Meeting
Our joint Academic Conference and Corporate Members meeting back in June 2024 was a successful initiative. Penn State President Neeli Bendapudi (once a speaker at an ISBM meeting more than twenty years ago) welcomed the 140 participants, including students and thought leaders from the academic community and executive leaders at B2B firms. It was great to observe so many students and faculty attending practitioner sessions, and practitioners joining academic debates. We shared all lunches and breaks, giving academics and executives ample opportunities to network. Several doctoral students told us how thrilled they were to engage in informal conversations with executives!
One highlight was a joint session chaired by ISBM Associate Director Andrew Petersen, with the help of ISBM Executive Director Lynn Yanyo. Top-notch B2B marketing academics Sandy Jap, V Kumar, Raji Srinivasan addressed big and global challenges that keynote speaker Dr. Fariborz Ghadar had introduced earlier that morning. The panel also addressed questions from ISBM Corporate Members.
Another highlight included ISBM Founding Directors Irv Gross and Gary Lilien, and ISBM Executive Director Emeritus Ralph Oliva. Having all three ISBM giants on stage will be a lasting memory. We were offered a nostalgic, amusing, and thought-provoking perspective on the early 1980s when the ISBM was created and the following decades. This trip down memory lane reminded us why the ISBM exists, and why we should continue supporting marketing scholars taking up the challenge to study the complexities that are inherent to B2B marketing.
Finally, the June events also included a retirement party for Gary Lilien, now Distinguished Research Emeritus Professor of Management Science. Leading by example, Gary published in the A journals of our field in six (6!) consecutive decades. He scored his first A hit in 1972 which made me realize that I have never lived in a world where Gary did not publish in the top journals of our field! That he organized a retirement party during an ISBM conference sums it all up.
There is much more that I could share about the ISBM events in June, but I want to end with a loud round of applause for Lori Nicolini, who has done a sublime job juggling and coordinating all these events!
Distinguished Research Fellows
Another example of ISBM connecting academics and practitioners, is the ISBM Distinguished Research Fellows program. This program honors senior B2B marketing scholars who are dedicated to the ISBM’s mission of advancing the theory and practice of the discipline, dedicated to working with practitioners, and deeply involved in B2B education and research. At the ISBM conference, four new Fellows were inaugurated. It was a great and unexpected honor that I was among these four. The other three Fellows were Werner Reinartz (University of Cologne), Venky Shankar (Southern Methodist University), and Hari Sridhar (Texas A&M University). Werner, Venky, and Hari have worked at the forefront of B2B marketing for so many years and have made significant contributions to the ISBM—it is a great pleasure and an absolute honor to count them among our ISBM Fellows.
ISBM Scholars
We have introduced a new initiative, “ISBM Scholars”, to also recognize strong B2B marketing scholars who have made significant contributions to B2B marketing research, teaching, and practice, but are still within their first 10 years in the field after receiving their PhDs. We introduced the ISBM Scholars program to fill a critical gap. For decades, the ISBM has recognized senior Distinguished Research Fellows while also supporting doctoral students via the Doctoral Support Award Competition, the ISBM has supported 127 students from 56 universities across four continents)! Because of our focus on Fellows and students, we seldom turned the spotlight on the sizeable group of productive B2B scholars that find themselves in between these groups. We have now recognized a select few as the inaugural class of ISBM Scholars: they have successfully transitioned from doctoral students to highly influential B2B marketing scholars. Thanks to their cutting-edge research, the B2B marketing field evolves, progresses, and ventures into uncharted territories. They are also extremely valuable to B2B marketing practitioners who face entirely new challenges today.
Warm congratulations to our inaugural class of ISBM Scholars: Andrew Crecelius (Iowa State University), Colleen Harmeling (Florida State University), Justin Lawrence (Oklahoma State University), and Huanhuan Shi (Texas A&M University)!
Up to the next chapter
In closing, it is hard to imagine that it has already been five years since I took over from Gary Lilien as ISBM Director. So much has happened since then, including an ISBM business model transition in the middle of a worldwide pandemic! Your unwavering support for ISBM has been heartwarming. It was a great ride. Today, Andrew and I are ready for the next chapter which will be filled with new initiatives. Connecting academics with practitioners will be one of the strategic levers for the coming three years. And we plan to take it up a notch! We also plan to introduce new initiatives in the near future to stimulate and support truly novel B2B marketing research. Meanwhile, do reach out if you have ideas or suggestions. We look forward to working with you in the years to come!
2024 ISBM PhD Camp Recap
The Institute for the Study of Business Markets sponsored its 10th PhD Camp this year on June 4th at the Smeal College of Business, Penn State.
A special thanks to Lisa Scheer (University of Missouri & Karl-Franzens-Universität Graz, Austria) and Kersi Antia (Western University), our Camp Co-Directors, who put together an exceptional program for PhD students.
In addition to receiving advice, mentoring and feedback on their own research proposals, our doctoral students heard from 14 faculty “camp counselors” on a variety of topics which included:
- Creatively obtaining data
- Making the case for your research
- Developing and nurturing relationships
- Career strategies – while dealing with life
Our faculty counselors were joined by 20 doctoral students from 16 universities in 5 countries. Thank you, faculty counselors, we could not hold this event without your support and dedication.
Preceding the Camp, we featured a pre-camp workshop on Theory Construction taught by Professor Ajay Kohli (Georgia Tech); 15 doctoral students were able to join this pre-camp event. Special thanks once again to Ajay, for jump-starting our camp program with his successful and highly requested seminar by doctoral students.
Thanks to everyone who participated in and supported this program. We hope to see continued involvement in the next Camp in 2026!
Lisa Scheer
Camp Director
University of Missouri &
Karl-Franzens-Universität Graz, Austria
Email: scheerl@missouri.edu
Kersi Antia
Camp Vice-Director
Western University
Email: kantia@ivey.ca
Greetings from the ISBM Membership
This past June 4-6th we held our annual Members Meeting jointly with our Academic Conference – a celebration of 40 years of ISBM – at our founding location Penn State. The University was lovely in early summer. The theme was Foresight: the next 40 years of B2B Marketing.
At this Members Meeting our attendees took advantage of complimentary 1-on-1 30-minute sessions with our ISBM Academic and Practice Fellows; as well as mini-course, Everyday VOC: How to Capture Insights from Every Customer Interaction delivered by Practice Fellow Dan Adams.
Our welcome dinner provided an entertaining retrospective looking back at the past 40 years featuring our honored guests, Gary Lilien, Irv Gross and Ralph Oliva.
The presentations over two days were stellar with futurist projections and processes. “We need to ANTICIPATE the future with rigorous imagination,” said Pat Marren, Futurist and Speaker. All of these presentations are recorded and available in B2BPulse.
The Marketing Excellence Roundtable on June 6th led us to hold a special Jam Session in September on AI. Led by Amir Hartman, the groundbreaking author of Net Ready, (which in the 1990’s laid out the framework for deploying the internet), we took three member firms through the process of prioritizing use cases for AI in B2B Marketing and creating a corporate structure to manage AI activities. I think this will be a busy area for research and our membership for the next several years.
Lynn
ISBM Founders Fund
I am delighted to announce the creation of the ISBM Founders Fund, a source of support for B2B marketing that will allow the ISBM to significantly increase the breadth and depth of its activities. Gary Lilien, one of the founders (now Emeritus Director) of the ISBM announced the formation of the Fund at a recent event celebrating his retirement from Penn State.
The ISBM Founders Fund Legacy Statement is as follows:
The Institute for the Study of Business Markets (ISBM) was founded at Penn State in 1983 by Irwin Gross, Gary Lilien and the late David Wilson with two main missions: (1) B2B knowledge creation through funding and encouragement of global university research in B2B markets and (2) Improve the Practice of B2B Marketing by identifying the best B2B thinking and practices and sharing that information among the supporting businesses through meetings, publication and other forms of dissemination .
In recognition of over 40 years of the ISBM’s continuing focus on these two important missions, retired ISBM Directors and Founders Irwin Gross, Gary Lilien and Ralph Oliva have created the ISBM Founders Fund at Penn State.
The goal of the Fund is to provide financial support to the ISBM to further its mission to provide thought leadership in the B2B domain globally.
Andrew Petersen and I, and the rest of the ISBM team, are extremely grateful for the creation of the Fund and would like to thank Gary, Ralph and Irv for the support and the faith the Fund shows in the ISBM. Under their leadership, the ISBM has supported aspiring B2B marketing scholars across the globe. This Fund is yet another manifestation of these B2B giants’ selfless dedication and shared passion for B2B marketing. The Fund will give us the ability to create new and more impactful initiatives that will advance the theory and practice of B2B marketing globally. We plan to launch new ISBM activities to help new generations of doctoral students and young scholars. We will also take new initiatives to connect B2B marketing academics and practitioners. The Fund opens an exciting new chapter for the ISBM – stay tuned!
The Fund welcomes contributions from all who support the ISBM’s mission and vision. Gifts to the ISBM Founders Fund can be made at http://raise.psu.edu/ISBMFounders.
2024 Doctoral Support Award Competition Submission Deadline November 18, 2024
Penn State’s Institute for the Study of Business Markets (ISBM) is now holding its 34th annual Business Marketing Doctoral Support Award Competition. This year’s deadline to submit abstract submissions is November 18, 2024.
Up to three candidates in accredited doctoral programs will receive dissertation support awards. Dissertations in any area of business-to-business (B2B) marketing or in any of the methodological areas that support advances in business marketing will be considered.
We welcome submissions on various B2B topics, including traditional areas such as B2B innovation, buying behavior, customer analytics, and interorganizational relationships.
In addition to applications from PhD students in marketing, we encourage applications from students in economics, management science, organizational psychology, statistics, anthropology and other disciplines whose developments help advance our understanding of the operation of the B2B marketplace.
Beyond a good fit with ISBM and a clear focus on a B2B marketing problem, good submissions have the following criteria:
- Important to B2B marketing practice;
- Important to B2B marketing academia;
- Rigorous in terms of the proposed research methodology;
- At a stage where ISBM support can make a difference.
Doctoral students can submit at various stages of their dissertation process.
The Award consists of:
- Up to $5,000 in financial assistance to be used for travel, conference attendance, data collection, and other expenses of conducting and presenting the results of the research.
- Assistance, as needed, in gaining the cooperation of both ISBM member firms and non-member firms for data, interview, etc.
PhD candidates interested in the competition should submit an abstract of their research not to exceed five double-spaced pages, along with a current vita and a vita of their dissertation advisor. The abstract should address the potential importance of their work to business marketing practice, its theoretical contributions, the research methodology, and the amount and kind of support requested.
For complete competition details and electronic submission procedures visit https://isbm.org/doctoral-support-award-competition/.
Any questions regarding submissions can be emailed to Program Coordinator, Lori Nicolini LNicolini@psu.edu.
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Headquartered in the Smeal College of Business at Penn State, the ISBM has been supporting business-to-business marketing research and practice since 1983. To date, ISBM has supported 127 doctoral students. Funding for this competition comes from the generous support of the ISBM Corporate Members and the ISBM Founders Fund.
IPSS Update: Spring 2025 Offering
Spring 2025: Vivek Astvansh (McGill University & Indiana University) will teach the course Establishing Causality: A Multi-Method Approach.
This course acknowledges the challenges and informs you of various methods you can use to convince reviewers/referees and editors that your observed beta is causal. We will begin with experiments, so you are set up on the gold standard for causality. Next, we will discuss various methods that take you away from correlational evidence and toward its causal counterpart. Specifically, we will study instrumental variables and their use in regressions, instrument-free methods (e.g., Copula, heteroskedasticity-based methods), nonrandom shocks that require various matching methods and DiD, and random shocks. This course will introduce you to several databases that can help you answer firm-level questions, in general, and B2B/B2G questions, specifically. We will also talk about data from primary survey, secondary survey (think of YouGov), and interviews. Last, I will cull random shocks in the United States and China that academics in accounting, finance, and management disciplines have used and I will teach how these shocks can help answer marketing questions.
Please bring this PhD seminar to the attention of your promising B2B PhD students. Students should follow the “Admission Procedure” and can register online.
The course will consist of eight sessions of 120 minutes each. The course will be offered on Fridays from 9:00AM-11:00AM (U.S. EST) beginning on March 7 and ending on May 9, 2025. We believe 9:00AM EST will allow participation from people in the U.S. Pacific time zone (6:00AM for them), Asia, Australia, Middle East, Europe, and hopefully, South America and Africa.
For the complete course description and overview visit the course page.
To make the IPSS seminars as accessible as possible, we now offer up to 80% scholarships for eligible students. In order to be considered for the scholarship, students must follow the Admission Procedures which includes:
- Statement of purpose indicating interest in B2B Marketing
- One recommendation letter from a faculty member or advisor
- Completion of the online registration form
Materials will be reviewed by our admissions faculty and staff before scholarships are awarded.
We look forward to seeing you at upcoming programs. Additionally, if you have any feedback or suggestions, please don’t hesitate to contact me.
J. Andrew Petersen
Associate Director
ISBM, Penn State
Email: jap57@psu.edu