In our view, the goal of scholarly research should be to facilitate and encourage communication between academia and practice. Yet many journals seem to be losing this focus. We explicitly seek to ensure that IMM provides all readers a wealth of robust, highly relevant information and thus serves as a functional bridge between academic theory and practitioner applications, even as it maintains stringent standards for scientific rigor. With its unique attention to industrial and B2B markets, IMM must offer both practical advantages and new impetus for marketers who seek to enhance their skills and to improve effectiveness and efficiency of such markets. This comprehensive approach will keep readers abreast of the timeliest data and current thinking necessary for better marketing decisions and strategy in global industrial and B2B markets.

Moreover, we strongly encourage novel, groundbreaking contributions from disparate research and B2B marketing management traditions, as well as cross-fertilization with external disciplines, because such efforts can produce innovative ideas, new conceptual developments, and clever research methodologies. In a similar vein, we actively encourage global contributions from scholars representing various B2B marketing management domains. Our criteria for reviewing submitted manuscripts require that they be based on high quality, rigorous scholarly research; we expressly note here that we have no bias or preference for empirical work versus theory, and we welcome diverse methodological, philosophical, and theoretical approaches. Our goal is to publish research situated in either a pure or applied research tradition, derived from a stringent theoretical conceptualization, which exhibits an appropriate, defensible research methodology.

IMM therefore will continue to look for world-class research focusing on B2B marketing management, and we will continue to move from descriptive research (such as single case studies) to more explanatory and predictive research. We will continue to put more emphasis on articles employing pluralistic research methodologies, especially those articles that adapt research methodologies from other disciplines to explain industrial marketing management behavior, as well as research focused on improving the effectiveness and efficiency of B2B marketing management practitioners. We will welcome methodological entries that adjust designs applied in prior studies or modify extant experimental procedures to enhance he validity of statistical outcomes or increase experimental realism.