Deciphering B2B Marketers' Concerns in Marketing ‘with’ Clients: Further Insights into How B2B Characteristics Foster and Inhibit UGC Generation and Its Leverage

B2B marketers are encouraged to leverage UGC in accomplishing marketing goals, yet have serious concerns in encouraging their clients to post UGC and in leveraging it. In drawing from in-depth interviews with B2B practitioners and building on previous research on information technology and B2B marketing, our findings and analysis address these concerns with confidentiality and conflicts of interest by relating them to the B2B characteristics of multiple stakeholders, high value exchanges, complex and elaborate specifications, and long-term relationships. Extrapolating from these findings and analysis, discussion presents a framework elaborating the multi-organizational information system of B2B UGC that aids B2B marketers and researchers in deciphering the impacts of B2B characteristics on marketers' efforts to encourage clients to generate UGC, and to leverage such UGC. Contributions specify the inter-organizational information system of B2B UGC, add precision in defining B2B UGC marketing, and add to knowledge of the impacts of B2B characteristics on B2B UGC generation and leverage, while recommendations guide B2B marketers in addressing their concerns in ways that generate and leverage UGC towards the goal of market development for the benefit of all collaborators.