Theory development in business marketing has
gained increased traction in recent years as evidenced by the IMM (2013)
Special Issue on “Theoretical perspectives in industrial marketing management”
and the research movement driven by the Service Dominant Logic (Vargo and Lusch,
2011; Vargo and Lusch, 2017).  While
research in B2B marketing has significantly increased and become more
fragmented, it is essential to create a better understanding of the current knowledge
bases of the domain and analyze where the field is heading.  An obvious approach for creating such an understanding
is to examine the principal research paradigms (or research approaches) to
business marketing (see e.g. Nicholson, Brennan, and Midgley, 2014; Pels,
Möller, and Saren, 2009). 

The objective of the paper is to provide a
meta-theoretical analysis of the B2B research domain by making the underlying
assumptions and intellectual goals of its key research paradigms transparent, and
thus enable a rational assessment of the strengths and weaknesses of each
paradigm. The key premise of the study is that the North American mainstream tradition
(NAM) and the IMP Group driven research approach (IMP) form the dominant
paradigms of B2B marketing. Paradigmatic profiling is used as a method of
analysis (Möller, 2013; Nicholson et
al., 2014; Peters, Pressey, Vanharanta, and Johnston, 2013). As a form of
meta-theoretical mapping it allows us to gain a better understanding of the
fragmented knowledge base, to identify the white domains, and to provide
suggestions on how to enhance theory construction in the field.  Through an analysis of implicit assumptions
and key drivers of paradigm development, the study also adds to our
understanding of why we are doing specific kind of research, and how we could
make better informed decisions concerning our studies