Title: The missing element in implementing key account management

Authors: Ruby Hermanto; Utomo Sarjono Putro; Santi Novani

Addresses: School of Business and Management, Institut Teknologi Bandung, Jalan Ganesha No. 10, Lebak Siliwangi, Coblong, Bandung, Jawa Barat 40132, Indonesia ' School of Business and Management, Institut Teknologi Bandung, Jalan Ganesha No. 10, Lebak Siliwangi, Coblong, Bandung, Jawa Barat 40132, Indonesia ' School of Business and Management, Institut Teknologi Bandung, Jalan Ganesha No. 10, Lebak Siliwangi, Coblong, Bandung, Jawa Barat 40132, Indonesia

Abstract: With the proliferation of key account management (KAM) for the past three decades, starting late 1970s and early 1980s, academics attention on business-to-business (B2B) sales and marketing has shifted to KAM. Plenty of company efforts to adopt KAM are failing. On the contrary, some scholars highlighted that research on KAM implementation remains lacking. This paper intends to investigate all research on KAM implementation using the framework of organisational change elements of content, context, and process (CCP). All KAM implementation research is classified based on CCP to investigate the sufficiency number of research on securing the success of KAM implementation. Through a systematic literature review, this paper found a research gap in the process element of implementing KAM. This paper then proposes to conduct further study of using Kotter eight-step change process as the framework to process the implementation of KAM.

Keywords: key account management; KAM; implementation; change process; business-to-business; B2B.

DOI: 10.1504/IJBEX.2021.115845

International Journal of Business Excellence, 2021 Vol.24 No.3, pp.384 - 407

Received: 19 Oct 2018
Accepted: 10 Jul 2019
Published online: 25 Jun 2021 *

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