This edition of The International Journal for Construction Marketing
marks a departure from the usual IJCM procedures in that it has,
for the first time, had a guest editor managing the production
of an edition. I took this role and am pleased to report that
this edition of the IJCM shows the importance of construction
marketing research to the international community. Unsurprisingly,
then, this edition has papers from around the world, namely The
Netherlands, Australia, Turkey, Canada and the UK. The five papers
published here are strong in breadth and depth of the research
and show the varying perspectives of construction marketing.
The first two papers, by Wilco Tijhuis and Faiza El-Higzi, are
theoretical in their approach to developing marketing ideas for
the construction industry. The following three papers by Constantine
and Lea Prevel Katsanis; A.Mehmet Haksever, Ismail H. Demir and
Omer Giran, and Gary Marshall and Ian Murdoch all deal with differing
facets of construction marketing using traditional research methodology.
Wilco Tijhuis's paper takes us into the developing, and rapidly
changing, field of e-business and marketing for construction companies.
He argues that, although e-business is growing in the international
construction arena, personal contact will always be necessary
and companies should still manage and market their businesses
to include interpersonal contacts.
The paper by Faiza El-Higzi, provides an understanding of the
process of internationalisation of Australian construction companies.
This paper uses established marketing literature, modifies it
and applies it to the Australian construction industries. Much
of the research presented is international in nature and applicable
beyond Australia.
Constantine and Lea Prevel Katsanis consider business development
activities and their implications for the marketing in the Architecture,
Engineering and Construction industry. Their case studies of eight
North American companies revealed the ways in which companies
adopt differing marketing strategies. Their research leads to
conclusions that show how relationship marketing has a positive
impact on business development activities.
The paper by A.Mehmet Haksever, Ismail H. Demir and Omer Giran,
also explores developing relationships, this time long term relationships
between contractors and sub-contractors in the UK. Their results
show that by developing such relationships, benefits such as better
communication, less conflict and risk can be demonstrated, although
they argue that these relationships are not commonly practised
in the UK, primarily, they speculate, because of short-term and
commercial-driven attitudes.
The final paper in this edition, by Gary Marshall and Ian Murdoch,
use the SERVQUAL model to gain insights into customer and user
opinions of consulting engineers. They come to conclusions relating
to how important the five dimensions of service quality, reliability,
responsiveness, assurance, empathy and tangibles, are and how
these results can be of benefit to consulting engineers.
Many thanks for the hard work of the review team at The University
of Auckland: Robert Amor, Margot Buchanan-Oliver, Gary Mason and
Rosemary Scofield, and to the other anonymous reviewers of the
papers, here in New Zealand and overseas.
Suzanne Wilkinson
Guest Editor,
The University of Auckland, New Zealand.
October 2001.
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