Thoroughly updated throughout, this much-anticipated new edition provides students with a comprehensive, state-of-the-art view of industrial marketing. With a focus on strategic thinking and acting, the authors examine the distinct challenges of the business-to-business marketplace. These include faster product and service development, shortened product life cycles, new processes for selling, distribution, and customer service, increase in entrepreneurial firms, and the need to create and sustain long-term customer relationships. Separate chapters are devoted to buying decisions, market research and analysis, and purchasing practices, including treatment of the latest technological developments in just-in-time systems, web-based procurement, and enterprise resource planning and manufacturing systems.Each chapter includes illustrations of real world marketing issues, key concepts, learning objectives, and discussion questions. An instructor's manual test with items is available.