Paper info

The academic/practitioner gap in business to business marketing: A review and future research directions

Nektarios Tzempelikos

The paper was published at the 32nd IMP-conference in Poznan, Poland in 2016.

There is concern that academic research in marketing does not sufficiently help practitioners solve their day-to-day, practical problems. The purpose of this study is to systematically review the literature that focuses on the academic/practitioner gap within the field of business-to-business markets and identify potential unexplored research opportunities in this area. Drawing on the B2B marketing literature and other related areas, the study provides a critical discussion of the literature that deals with the topic of relevance gap between the communities of academics and practitioners which is organized in five themes: the case of managerial relevance: the reasons of the gap between academics and practitioners: and the ways to bridge the gap. The study concludes by proposing an agenda for future research. The study aims to contribute to B2B marketing literature by providing an updated review of the pertinent literature along with insights of how B2B marketing research is evolving and what needs to be done to reach out to practitioners.