Is advertising an underappreciated driver of sales growth in B2B markets? Theoretical perspectives and empirical evidence

While firms in consumer markets spend hundreds of billions of dollars on advertising each year, firms in business markets are comparably hesitant to adopt advertising as a means to drive business and generate sales growth. Instead, a widespread belief is that sales success in business markets results from a quality focus and sales force support. Challenging these beliefs, this study proposes that B2B advertising can have effects that are meaningful and unmatched by effects resulting from a quality focus and sales force spending. Furthermore, we hypothesize that B2B advertising can help unlock dormant potentials in the established success drivers. We test the proposed effects empirically, drawing on more than 12,000 observations of the advertising expenses, quality focus, sales force spending, and sales growth of more than 2000 U.S.-based B2B firms between 1990 and 2015. This research provides novel insights for researchers and managers concerning the benefits of B2B advertising spending and the interplay between different success drivers in generating sales growth in business markets