A Configurational Perspective on Key Account Management

TLDR

Most firms struggle to manage key customer accounts, yet research on KAM is limited and fragmented, creating a gap between its importance and academic attention. The authors aim to develop an integrative conceptualization of KAM, defining key constructs in activities, actors, resources, and approach formalization. Using a configurational perspective and numerical taxonomy, they empirically identify eight prototypical KAM approaches from a cross‑industry, cross‑national study. The study reveals significant performance differences among the eight approaches and bridges marketing organization research with relationship marketing.

Abstract

Most firms struggle with the challenge of managing their key customer accounts. There is a significant gap between the importance of this organizational design problem in practice and the research attention paid to it. Sound academic research on key account management (KAM) is limited and fragmented. Drawing on research on KAM and team selling, the authors develop an integrative conceptualization of KAM and define key constructs in four areas: (1) activities, (2) actors, (3) resources, and (4) approach formalization. Adopting a configurational perspective to organizational research, the authors then use numerical taxonomy to empirically identify eight prototypical KAM approaches on the basis of a cross-industry, cross-national study. The results show significant performance differences among the approaches. Overall, the article builds a bridge between marketing organization research and relationship marketing research.