"Marketing of competence: Exploring the resouce-based content of value-for-customer through a case study analysis"

The article discusses the notion of marketing competencies in buyer supplier relationships, and the role these competencies play in creating value for the customer. Existing work in the role of competencies in industrial marketing has two main foci. The first, established, approach deals with competencies as inputs to organizational processes, and seeks to establish in how far marketing competencie such as customer relationship management, channel design, etc. lead to superior financial returns. The second, emerging, approach focuses on the marketing of competencies as a source for customer value. This uses supply- as well as demand-side perspectives to look at these two approaches and suggests a typolology involving four distinct value-creation strategies. Recent literature is discussed and implications for advancing the application of resource-based thinking to industrial marketing are provided.