Teaching Business-to-Business Marketing

The chapter is organised into five sections. The practical significance and distinctiveness of business-to-business marketing are addressed first, and then in the second section there is an appraisal of several important and distinctive theoretical ideas that permeate business-to-business marketing thinking. Following this, the third section is devoted to an appraisal of the IMP approach to business markets. Some challenges that this approach, the most important coherent body of intellectual work in the business marketing field, poses to the educator are examined. The fourth section examines the specific ethical issues that are found in business markets and presents ideas for introducing ethical issues in the classroom and, in particular, ideas for convincing students of the significance of this topic. Finally, and in lieu of a conclusion, in the final section I have simply collected a few handy tips based on my own experience of teaching business-to-business marketing.