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Aims to analyze the process of key account management in the industrial sector by highlighting the most recurrent problems that arise linked to this process. The research is based on a period of six years, during which several major industrial groups in France either set up or developed their key account management programs. It represents both a theoretical positioning according to the process of key account management, and the discovery made early on of an emerging picture of this process and the absence of any real understanding of it. Proposes two terms that best sum up key account management research: co‐ordination and transversality.

The purpose of this paper is to identify what managerial implications research related to inter-organizational interfaces has been produced in marketing. For this aim, the authors focus on a specific concept implemented in many firms that operate on business-to-business markets, which is key account management (KAM).

The authors used the Ebsco Database entering “account management” as a key word in the title row. The search provided 51 papers to which the authors added four MSI reports written by Moriarty and Shapiro between 1980 and 1984. The authors then identified such keywords as “managers”, “practitioners”, “marketers”, “managerial”, “business”, and their variations as well as normative words such as “should”, “must”, etc. in order to identify managerial implications.

Four main findings are provided: a clear managerial purpose is affirmed by KAM academic works whether as a central “purpose” of the works or as “implications”; these managerial implications may display different forms (dimensions to be considered, consequences to anticipate, advices); though the managerial scope of KAM works is clearly visible, the sophistication of managerial recommendations remains … limited; the identification of who is exactly “the manager” targeted by the implications remains vague.

The authors discuss the notion of managerial relevance of academic research.

The authors explore sources for practices (whether they are the ones of scholars or managers) that could help “spelling out more effectively the managerial implications.

To the knowledge this is the first work that reviews so precisely how academic articles address to the managerial audience on a precise issue. Furthermore, the authors believe that KAM is an interesting and appropriate field for such a review because it is widely implemented on business markets.

This article aims to build on existing literature on value and proposes new perspectives and facets of relational value in key account management (KAM).

Building on traditional value perspectives, value in KAM is conceptually deconstructed and linked with strategic value approaches.

The article finds that a multifaceted key account value perspective includes three different types of value: exchange value, proprietary value, and relational value. Depending on the type of value constellation within a KAM relationship, a number of distinct key account value strategies are presented and discussed.

The article provides an innovative concept of value in strategically important business‐to‐business relationships. Based on this, several strategic implications regarding the management of value are derived which enable further empirical research and a more nuanced managerial approach towards KAM.

The concept of key account management (KAM) has received considerable attention from practitioners and scholars for well over 20 years now. However, numerous articles build on a set of tacit assumptions for which we lack empirical evidence. This paper seeks to propose an empirical test of several of these assumptions.

The contribution draws on a study conducted among 297 purchasing managers in two industries (packaging goods, market research data).

The findings indicate that parts of the foundations of KAM are not as solid as they may appear at first sight.

This paper invites managers of KAM programs to carefully consider the objectives they assign to such programs by integrating the idea of value created both for key customers and for suppliers implementing such programs.

The paper extends knowledge of key account management in the business field by providing new – and, in the light of the extant literature, sometimes rather counter‐intuitive – insights in this important management phenomenon. It does this by systematically comparing key account relationships and non‐key account relationships.

The main body of research on industrial marketing over the last 20 years has concentrated on giving a relational framework to an activity which had previously been understood to be essentially transactional. Therefore, the management of business relationships is today considered as a critical task on which a company's very existence depends. Consequently, allotting limited company resources between several relationships has become a major task for marketers who must decide how to divide and allot time and money for customers and prospective customers. In this renewed context, the portfolio concept for supplier-customer relationships are of a continuous nature and when the boundaries of the customer are easy to delimit. In order to widen the scope of their relevance, we propose to re-embed the supplier-customer relationship into the network of business actors that influences it and to be very careful in defining who is the customer.

The purpose of this paper is to deal with business-to-business distribution, with a strong focus on the relationships developed by a distributor with its customers and its producers.

This paper is based on an in-depth analysis of a wholesaler specialized in fresh fruit and vegetable distribution. Data were gathered on the basis of 18 in-depth interviews. An additional important work of second-order data analysis was also conducted (sector analyses; statistics; companies’ Web sites).

This paper qualifies the different stages a wholesaler goes through in the relationships with its suppliers on the one side and its customers on the other. This work also identifies the nature of the impact of one type of relationship (wholesalers/producers) on the other (wholesalers/customers).

The findings allow distribution firms to view distribution channels as places where they can have some latitude to find new positions other than the ones imposed by producers.

This research uses different concepts connected with triadic settings (dynamics, triggers and interconnectedness) and integrates them to provide a new perspective on how a business-to-business distributor can take a position in a distribution channel.

Seeks to provide a historical case study of the founding and development of the Journal of Business & Industrial Marketing from the perspective of the two editors of the journal covering the first 20 years of publication.

The editors report on their experiences of establishing and nurturing the journal over a 20‐year period. Individual experiences are reported along with specific historical events and specific journal contents.

The paper provides information about the history of the journal and its founding, indicating the difficulties and managerial skills necessary to accomplish such a task. The paper also recognizes the 20‐year growth and contribution of the journal and those who contributed to it.

The viewpoints of the editors are anecdotal and recall events as far back as 20 years. They summarize the events of a 20‐year period in the article, relying on memory and information from archival files.

The paper provides one description of the founding and development of a leading journal in the field of business and industrial marketing. A list is presented summarizing Special Issues and significant milestones of the journal. The paper is a must‐read for anyone contemplating starting a new journal.

This article presents the only complete history of the Journal of Business & Industrial Marketing.