As you are just enjoying the IMP conference, and you may think that one year to the next conference is too long, here is some good news: Join the 4th International Conference on Business Market Management in Copenhagen from 18 March to 20 March 2009 – an excellent opportunity to stay in touch with colleagues and friends just mid-way to the next IMP conference. Please see the attached call for papers for further details.

We are looking forward to seeing you in Copenhagen,
Thomas Ritter and the Center of Business Marketing and Purchasing at Copenhagen Business School

PhD course in Relationship Management

 Strategizing & prioritizing
 Supplier development and development through suppliers
 Customer development and development through customers
are three types of topics that will be studied in this course given by Professor Per V. Freytag, University of Southern Denmark
» More information

A New Issue of the IMP JOURNAL is now available on the site.

The third issue of the current volume of the Journal is now on the site. This issue develops a number of important themes that have been prominent in IMP Research. The first two articles are extended case studies in the IMP Tradition and both explore the concept of "Embeddedness". The first article by Frida Lind and Anna Dubois examine a number of aspects of embeddedness using the case of a research innnovation. The second paper by Anna Bengtson and Hakan Hakansson looks at resource embeddedness in the context of a major technological change.

The third article by Lars Erik Gadde and David Ford examines the links between network thinking and the early works by distribution and marketing scholars. The article relates the two different approaches to empirical trends in distribution and suggests how a network approach could contribute to a greater understanding of distribution.

New dissertations
We are glad to present two new dissertations in our dissertation section. Firstly, it is Wendy van der Valk from The Netherlands who presented her dissertation in December. Secondly, it is a dissertation of Harri Terho from Finland who defended his thesis in June this year.
Håkan Håkansson

What’s going on at the IMP Doctoral Consortium?

When the first IMP Doctoral Consortium was arranged five years ago no one knew if the interest for such a forum for deep, informal discussions between PhD students and more experienced IMP researchers would last. The 5th IMP Doctoral Consortium, which will take place immediately prior to the main conference in Uppsala, Sweden, has nonetheless attracted yet another group of PhD students with a wide and interesting variety of research projects.

This years’ consortium, which is co-ordinated by Debbie Harrison, BI, Oslo, involves twelve PhD students and six members of faculty, as well as a number of eminent guest speakers. The 12 PhD students are: Ricardo Correia and Francisco Lemos, both based in Portugal and working with such varied research projects as the co-operation effect in the internationalisation of the firm (Francisco) and ‘Industrial Networks and Territorial Dynamics’ (Ricardo). From the host country Sweden, Stefan Karlsson and Mikael Lovblad are researching interactive product development and the impact of psychological contracts upon relationship commitment respectively. Helen Li, Isaac Ngugi and Daisy Tan from the UK are studying topics as varied as managing relationships in HE marketing, capabilities building and B2B e-commerce adoption. Aniko Schubert (Hungary) is investigating buyer-supplier relationships in the Hungarian FMCG sector, while Gwenaelle Oruezabala (France) is working with the role of boundary spanners in international B2B relationships. Olli Pekkarinen (Finland) is researching ‘Services in the Marketing of Customer Solutions’ while Mads Mortensen (Denmark) is working with the ‘Development of Attractiveness towards strategically important partners’. Mirjam Kibbeling from the Netherlands is studying value from supply management.

The members of the faculty this year includes professors Anna Dubois (Chalmers, Sweden), Geoff Easton (Lancaster University, UK), Håkan Håkansson (BI, Norway), Peter Naude (University of Manchester, UK) and Alexandra Waluszewski (Uppsala University, Sweden); along with Dr Debbie Harrison (BI, Norway). With this group of faculty, are mixture of research interests and countries are represented. In keeping with previous events, we will also have a number of plenary sessions taking place, with renowned researchers as guest speakers: Prof. M. Cunningham (Founding member of IMP), Prof. J. Johanson (Uppsala University, Sweden) and Prof. Peter LaPlaca, Editor-in-chief of Industrial Marketing Management (University of Hartford, USA).

Welcome to this – or to a future – IMP Doctoral Consortium!


Alexandra, Amjad and Enrico
The IMP 2008 Organizing Team