Threshold Concepts in Business-to-Business Marketing Education

The idea of ‘threshold concepts’, key concepts within a discipline that have the additional property of bringing about a qualitative transformation in student understanding, has been explored in many fields of study but has received little attention within marketing education. This paper seeks to rekindle interest in the discovery of threshold concepts in marketing. An exploratory analysis is conducted within the sub-discipline of business-to-business (B2B) marketing to seek to identify prima facie threshold concepts in that field. The paper begins by reviewing the literature on threshold concepts before focusing on the potential for identification of threshold concepts in marketing, then a preliminary analysis of potential threshold concepts in B2B marketing is presented. Limitations of this study and opportunities for further research are outlined in the concluding section.