Business Development: A New Organizational Anchorage of Strategic Marketing in B2b Companies?

Marketing is an established discipline in B2B companies. However, during the last years marketing has experienced a shift from strategic to operational tasks. Since B2B companies still have a need for market-orientation as well as for departments to be in charge of this, the question arises in which departments strategic marketing tasks are performed. One possibility is given by the newly established business development units. So far scarcely any prior research analyzes the scope of tasks of business development in practice. Hence the purpose of this paper is to analyze on the basis of a preliminary qualitative study what tasks, instruments and methods are found in business development with regard to the question if and how business development departments take over typical tasks of strategic marketing.