Strategic Business-to-Business Marketing Communications in the German Machinery and Plant Engineering Sector

A multitude of constantly evolving communication channels and tools present B2B branding communication today with the challenge of communicating efficiently and effectively in an increasingly complex interaction with customers and prospects. The continuously expanding media and communication channel landscape over the last few years has contributed to a shift from one-way communication to two-way interaction between customers, external stakeholder groups, and companies. Available budgets and resources are usually not similarly adapted to the changes. Instead, many marketing communication managers are faced with the challenge of managing the increasing complexity and multitude of communication channels with the same or even decreasing resources – financial and human. Additionally increasing expectations of management for more transparency about the effectiveness of branding communication does not always necessarily simplify the decision about strategic measures for the further development of communication channels.

This dissertation addresses this dilemma and aims to examine the discipline of B2B marketing in the German machinery and plant engineering sector in depth by exploring how strategic decisions to adjust the company’s marketing communication approach are made. The research objectives are to understand how strategic decisions are made by gaining insights into the different steps of the decision-making process and how these are influenced by organisation structures and personal skills. It also aims to gain an understanding of what information and knowledge is used to strategically define the marketing communication approach.

The study was conducted from a marketing communication perspective with a total of 6 cases and 24 in-depth interviews from companies in the German mechanical and plant engineering environment each with a foundation of more than 60 years ago. Likewise, all companies show international or global sales activities with more than 20 global sales locations each and, in some cases, a country presence in more than 100 countries. The selected cases represent the investigated industry segment through a mix of different organisational structures ranging from owner-managed to multi-division companies. At the same time, they nevertheless behave and act similarly, as they either belong to the project business environment or to a product business type of company.

The insights gained from the work contribute to a more comprehensive understanding of the challenges for the further development of the marketing communication approach towards a strategic approach, which has already been discussed in the literature. At the same time, the findings indicate a new contribution to literature with the finding that strategic decision-making in marketing communication consists of two in parallel but mainly separate running processes – one focusing on selecting and publishing contents in the most efficient way and the second on developing the communication channel and tool landscape. The second mentioned is unfortunately not a process that is already established comprehensively in all conducted cases.

With these findings, the thesis contributes to the literature through its combination of the two main research disciplines namely marketing communication and decision-making. By linking the two disciplines, not only was a detailed understanding of strategic decision-making in marketing communication created but at the same time the applicability of the case study research method in a business context was investigated by studying the German mechanical and plant engineering industry. Contribution to practice is the suggestion of how to handle communication channels and tool development with a newly installed function.