Introduction

The importance of branding in business-to-consumer (B2C) contexts is well accepted. As Keller (1993, p. 2) emphasizes, “a firms most valuable asset for improving marketing productivity is the knowledge that has been created about the brand in consumers’ minds from the firm’s investments in previous marketing programs.” However, managers have been slower to recognize the value of developing a brand orientation, which refers to a strategic orientation that views branding as an important driver of firm success (Urde, 1999), in business-to-business (B2B) settings. This trend is changing. Research examining B2B branding issues are becoming more prevalent (see, e.g., Lambkin & Muzellec, 2010; Reijonen, Hirvonen, Nagy, Laukkanen, & Gabrielsson, 2015). Studies suggest that brands benefit industrial firms in a number of ways, including raising the quality perceptions of their offerings (Michell, King, & Reast, 2001), enabling premium pricing strategies (Michell et al., 2001), and improving market performance (Homburg, Klarmann, & Schmitt, 2010). Interestingly, many marketing practitioners do not recognize the strategic value of B2B brands (Leek & Christodoulides, 2011). As a result, they fail to adopt brand orientations. That is, they do not view B2B branding as an important component of their marketing strategies (Urde, Baumgarth, & Merrilees, 2013). Leek and Christodoulides (2011) suggest B2B managers may not understand the mechanism that links branding efforts to firm performance. Our initial in-depth interviews with managers seem to support this view. We find that B2B firms often eschew investing in brand-focused strategies because they are not convinced that they will result in immediate financial rewards. Extant research on B2B branding tends to focus on how B2B branding influences firm performance. Our study is different in that it focuses on understanding why some firms adopt a brand orientation while others do not. Specifically, we examine two research questions. (1) What factors influence whether B2B firms adopt brand orientations? (2) How does brand orientation affect brand performance? Drawing on research using upper-echelon theory (Hambrick, 2007; Hambrick & Mason, 1984), the resource-based view (Barney, 1991; Hunt, 2010), and service-dominant logic (Vargo & Lusch, 2004, 2008), we develop a theory-based model that highlights the role that brand orientation plays in translating key management and organizational factors into increased firm value and better brand performance (see Fig. 1). The model proposes that brand orientation is directly affected by managers’ entrepreneurial orientation and firms’ marketing capabilities. In addition, it hypothesizes that brand orientation influences brand success both directly and indirectly by encouraging customer value co-creation, which in turn affects brand performance. We test our model using data collected from 166 Chinese industrial firms operating in a variety of industrial sectors. Our study contributes to the existing literature in several ways. First, it provides new insights concerning the factors that affect whether B2B firms adopt brand orientations by looking at both characteristics of managers and capabilities of firms. This provides guidance for firms that would like to become more brand oriented. Second, it uncovers the underlying process by which brand orientation affects brand performance (i.e., both directly and indirectly through customer value cocreation). Third, the inclusion of customer co-creation as a construct in our model provides additional insights into the relational aspects of B2B branding (Davis, Golicic, & Marquardt, 2008; Zhang, Jiang, Shabbir, & Du, 2015). Fourth, in general, our results enable marketing practitioners to “see” how B2B branding efforts can affect performance, which could result in more firms adopting a B2B brand orientation. Our paper is organized as follows. First, a theoretical framework is developed and the corresponding hypotheses are presented. Second, the analysis method employed is outlined. Third, the results and research findings are summarized. Finally, the paper concludes with discussions of both the theoretical and managerial implications.