Applying multi-stage marketing in industrial markets: Exploratory insights on its successful implementation, management and adaptation in dynamic markets
通过德国一家零部件和消耗品制造商的案例研究，探索多阶段营销在工业市场中的成功实施、管理及适应市场动态的关键因素，发现供应商需具备独特资源和能力，并补充面向间接客户的销售单元。
Multi-stage marketing (MSM), a market-driving strategy applicable in multi-stage industrial markets to shape customer preferences, is still an underresearched field. While the strategic and operational dimensions of MSM have already been recognized and researched, MSM's processual dimension, i.e. its implementation, management and adaptation, has so far gone unnoticed. Based on a comprehensive case study of a German component and consumables manufacturer, this paper will derive in an exploratory research approach first insights on the determinants of a successful implementation and management of MSM, as well as the impact of market dynamics on the design of a firm's salesforce. The results indicate that a supplier applying MSM has to have unique resources and capabilities at its disposal, which are performance-relevant for the downstream market stages and allow for continuous organizational adaptation. Moreover, firms need to complement their traditional salesforce with additional indirect customers/stakeholder-oriented sales units for enabling MSM at the other market stages.