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Commentary
on “Business-to-Business
Marketing Textbooks:
A Comparative Review”
James A. Narus
ABSTRACT. Professor Backhaus and his colleagues undertake ambitious
research to evaluate American textbooks on business-to-business
marketing. Yet, in the process they do not report formal and universally
accepted standards for business-to-business marketing textbook design
and content, choosing instead to draw upon their own informally derived
preferences. They apply the Bloom et al. (1956) taxonomy, on a
limited basis, without providing validity and reliability test results.
They evaluate several textbooks on the coverage characteristics of “instrumentally-
oriented” and “marketing-management” approaches to
marketing. They conclude by promoting the “transaction- types” approach
and in particular the Backhaus version as a suitable framework
for a business-to-business marketing textbook. My assessment follows.
[Article copies available for a fee from The Haworth Document Delivery Service:
1-800-HAWORTH. E-mail address:
Website: ©2002 by The Haworth Press, Inc. All
rights reserved.]
KEYWORDS. Business marketing, industrial marketing, education
James A. Narus is Professor of Marketing, Babcock Graduate School of Management,
Wake Forest University, Charlotte, NC.
Address correspondence to: James A. Narus, Babcock Graduate School of Management,
Wake Forest University, Suite 150, One Morrocroft Centre, 6805 Morrison Boulevard,
Charlotte, NC 28226-3551 USA (E-mail: [email protected]).
Journal of Business-to-Business Marketing, Vol. 9(4) 2002
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