Prof. Dr. Marc Kuhn

Brand worlds: Introducing experiential marketing to B2B branding, in: Industrial Marketing Management 72

Experiential marketing refers to strategies of staging and creating offerings for the purpose of facilitating extraordinary experiences. Branding and experiences are highly intertwined concepts. Instruments of experiential marketing are one of the strongest means of branding in the consumer area. They also exist in B2B marketing practice, for example in the form of brand worlds. So far, they have only received limited attention from the B2B branding perspective. The inherent differences between B2C and B2B raise the question what values the operating companies want to provide their visitors with these instruments in B2B. Building on 14 expert interviews with B2B practitioners managing brand worlds, we identify 12 experiential value sources, clustered in product related, brand related, customer related and process related value sources. They are strongly linked to instrumental dimensions of experiential value sources, aiming at helping visitors in their business activities. This paper contributes by introducing the concepts of experiential marketing and brand worlds to B2B branding. Taking the organizational perspective in the co-creation of experiences, it complements existing literature on experiential marketing in B2B from the customers perspective, and contributes to the understanding of the creation and management of experiences in this area.

Österle, Benjamin / Kuhn, Marc / Henseler, Jörg (2018): Brand worlds: Introducing experiential marketing to B2B branding, in: Industrial Marketing Management 72 (2018) 71–98.